One day in Lisbon
Thanks to a happy coincidence, almost two weeks ago, I visited Portugal’s capital, the amazing city of Lisbon. I spent there one day and a couple of hours and about half of the day was my free time. Of course, I took my camera and a tripod and went for a walk. Here I should step away from this story to tell another one, fairly important in this context. Until my 25 I’ve never seen the sea. My classmates in school every autumn told me lots of stories about how they spent their summer vacation in the South at some sea (although for Saint-Petersburg, most of Russia is south, to be honest). And in my child consciousness, “south” became some wonderful but far country, almost fairy tale land. After several years, I started to ask my father why we’ve never been to the sea. But he always gave me...
read moreFirst photography tutorial
A couple of weeks ago, I finished my first-ever photography tutorial. That’s not a regular video for such type of content. I mean, in this video, I’m not talking about camera settings for landscape photography, or gear necessary to take a sunset image, or anything other similar, no. (There are tons of such videos on YouTube already.) I decided to focus on what I called “traps for landscape photographers”, some kind of illusions that can take your mind and hold it for quite a long time, pulling you back from progress or at least making you mark time. This very video is the first part of the pre-planned three ones. And it is dedicated to beginners. What are the traps for any beginner in landscape photography? How to escape or get out of them if you are already stuck in? I talk about these things and much more in...
read moreLandscape video saga
Several days ago, I finished my long-long video about the journey to Russian Karelia that my wife and I had in autumn 2020. It’s a real saga that consists of seven chapters. I would like to tell some details about “A Journey To The Rocky Land” in this post. The first chapter is called “The Marble Canyon”. I chose such a title because our first trip was to the most famous landmark in Karelia, the artificial canyon with this name placed not far from the Ruskeala settlement. It was a huge quarry where the marble was extracted from 1765 till the early 90s of the XXth century. The marble from this quarry was used in the finishing and decoration of such buildings in Saint Petersburg as Saint Isaac’s and Kazan cathedrals, The State Hermitage Museum, Marble Palace, St. Michael’s Castle, and a couple of subway stations. In 1998, all...
read moreAngels among us, pt.2
OK, here’s the promised “another story”. (And here’s the first part if you haven’t read yet) Not so long ago, I was going home by subway. I was sad a bit for multiple reasons and to distract from my mirthless thoughts I was playing chess. Here I should notice that in my home city subway is usually full of people and that’s why I almost never take a seat – there’s always a woman with or without children or some older person who needs to sit more than me. So, I was standing opposite the seat row, holding a handrail, and playing chess on my smartphone. At some moment, a young woman entered the carriage and sat down right in front of me. I took a glance at her and managed to notice her beautiful but sad eyes (of course, she was wearing a mask as almost everyone in...
read moreMy channel one-year anniversary
Today is quite an important date for me. My YouTube channel exists already a year! Of course, I don’t count from the moment when I registered on YouTube! I mean a year since I started uploading my own videos. So, what do I have by now? Well, in general, the channel grows up much slower than I hoped initially. But, frankly speaking, now I have no idea why I expected that it will rocket to the skies in the first year. Actually, that was quite silly considering which content I offer and that I hadn’t an intention to buy lots of ads. Thus, as I know now, my development is quite normal. The more noticeable result I have is the obvious increase in the quality of my videos. If one year ago I certainly had some understanding of what and how to shoot, how to gather all footage into...
read moreAngels among us, pt.1
I bet you thought seriously about angels at least once in your life. (Of course, if you are a religious person this text is certainly not for you, so it’ll be better for you just to check out my photographs. No offense.) By “seriously” I mean not something like “Angels, yes. They’re God’s helpers on Heaven”. I mean sort of what “angels” could ever mean. Were them, I don’t know, the aliens coming to the ancient people and gave them some technology, or maybe it is kind of a symbol of some higher power, or something else, whatever. I personally get back to this question periodically during my entire conscious life. Naturally, I don’t have a solid answer just because I’m not a preacher or a theologist. I’m a simple thinking person. And I had a small incident 25 years back that I still regard as a little wonder....
read moreFind your vocation and the rest will be great?
I don’t know how about you but as for me, I read many times and heard in many movies that the most important task for a person during his (or her) life is to find a vocation, a mission to complete we come here. That’s some sort of mantra for smart and/or spiritualized humans. I personally spent the first 25 years of my life searching for my soulmate. I found her (or more correct to say, she found me), and what has happened next? Do our lives immediately became wonderful? Definitely yes for the first several months but then reality showed up again in all its ugliness. We both still had to earn money for a living doing work not interesting for us, creative persons. Therefore, I pondered what we were missing. At some moment, I had to admit that love is an undoubtedly essential but insufficient thing to...
read moreIt was a harsh year
I think nobody will argue with it. For me, it was so difficult that I think without my wonderful wife’s financial support I would have already returned to sales and worked in some pitiful store at best. Moreover, in the first half of the year, we were planning to move to another country. Obviously, we couldn’t make it due to the COVID-19. Another dream crashed. Best of all it could be described by the amazing song “Nothing Left To Say” by Imagine Dragons. Every word is just like my life and feelings during this no simple year. http://www.denischurin.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Imagine-Dragons-Nothing-Left-To-Say-kissvk.com_.mp3 2020 also took several greatly talented people who were the landmarks in their spheres. One of them is Sean Connery (I won’t mention the others because they were Russians and you unlikely know them). But as for the creative side of my life, it was a great year. The best so...
read moreDuck tales
Recently, I have uploaded quite an interesting video on my YouTube channel. Actually, it called “Near The Old Fortress” because it was filmed not far from our local (Leningrad region, Russia) landmark called Krepost’ Oresheck or also known as Shlisselburg Fortress. That’s an ancient Russian stronghold placed on the island in Ladoga lake near the Neva river head. But although this fortress appears in the video and it really looks great, the main and most interesting part of the film to my mind is duck tales caught in the frame. It’s not only a sort of mallard yoga exercises but also a small confrontation between two types of ducks. You can check it by yourself: It was a real pleasure to me to work on this short story and, frankly speaking, I assess it as one of my best videos so far. Therefore, I really hope that you like...
read moreAnother photo contest finalist
About an hour ago, I suddenly found out that in September this year I became a finalist of an all-Russian photo contest called “Water of Russia is the water of Victory” which was dedicated to the 75-year anniversary of victory in The Great Patriotic War (in case you don’t know this is a part of World War II which started after the Nazi troops crossed the Soviet Union border in 22nd June 1941 and lasted until Nazi surrender in 8th May 1945). I have participated with my photo of the Osinovetsky lighthouse which is on the Ladoga lakeshore not far from one of the former points of The Road of Life (again, in case you don’t know: The Road of Life was the path for the boats in summer, late spring, and early autumn, and for lorries during winter by which food, medicine, and ammo were delivered to besieged...
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