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 some excuses. Much later, I realized that for some reason, he simply never liked south at all with its hot weather, crowds of tourists, and any other unpleasant attributes that appeared in his head. And I suddenly understood that I have a dream – I wished to see the sea. In 2004, together with one wonderful girl who became my wife two years later, two of her friends, a guy and a girl, I finally went to the Black Sea. It is still one of the best vacations in my life. I fell in love with the sea. Perhaps forever. About ten years later, one of my former colleagues (and he is still my good friend; he is also a former submariner) told me about the ocean. Probably, he’s a good storyteller, or maybe I’m a quite impressionable person, or perhaps both, but at that moment, he gifted me a new dream – I wanted to see the ocean. At last, I got to my initial story. Having only half a day and knowing that Lisbon has several spots with a view of the Atlantic ocean, I didn’t doubt a minute where exactly to go. That’s why my new video below was filmed along the embankment of Tagus river from the 25th of April Bridge (which was immensely amazed me) to some pier with the desired view. In a few hours, I walked several km, absorbing emotions, memorizing views, filming footage, and capturing photographs. And I finally saw the ocean… Now, I have a new dream: to visit Lisbon one more time, to walk through another part of this unusual, wonderful city, and to visit the famous, most western point of Europe, Cabo da Roca. Thanks for reading and watching!...
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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 extraction works were stopped, the quarry was filled with water and got the status of the cultural heritage site. Before showing the beauty of this canyon and nature around, the first chapter explains why we all need vacations. The second chapter is devoted to a complex of waterfalls on the Tohmajoki river. That’s a touristic landmark with the corresponding constructions like handrails, souvenir shops, and, of course, a lot of people. Therefore, it demanded enough patience from me to find spots and/or to wait for the moment to take a decent shot and footage. I wanted to take some alpine sunset photographs for quite a long time. That doesn’t mean I’ve never taken such captures, but the last time was fairly way back, and I wanted to try myself again as I had a new vision and skills. We chose the Hiidenvuori mountain, which was quite far from our temporal home. But for that, we got fantastic views and beautiful sunset. We decided not to go far away for the fourth chapter because we had not so high but exciting mountain almost beside our home. Moreover, I wanted to take some shots from the mountain top during heavy rain. The Paasonvuori mountain gave us not only what I wanted but also an amazing, fairy-tale-like forest near its foot. The capital of Russian Karelia is Sortavala city. Just near the city’s edge, there’s a wonderful mountain park. We visited it with pleasure, and that footage is the base of the saga’s fifth chapter. Our pre-last trip was to the amazing, absolutely stunning waterfall called “Belye Mosty” which means “white bridges”. In fact, there are two waterfalls on two Kulismayoki river arms (and there were two bridges over them all made of...
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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 public transport now, and I’m not the exception). Then, I continued to play my game but the further time passed, the more I noticed some weird thing in my mind. It was like a tiny thought growing and getting stronger with every minute. Words came to me from nowhere, a sort of. Or a someone’s voice which you hear quite weak because it distant for now, so you proceed doing your deeds. But the voice is going louder and at some moment you already can’t ignore it due to it disturbs you and distracts you from your activity. And then you finally have to listen to it and afterward you understand every word. In my case, those words were: “Say to her: ‘You’ll manage the most important thing. Just believe in yourself!’” “What?!” – my first mental response was. Words in my head repeated… Well, you may probably already think that I’m some kind of person who always hears the voices in his head and most of the time wears a white jacket with long sleeves bounded behind his back. That’s not so. Yes, I always have a mental chat with myself but the mentioned above was completely different! Frankly, I’ve never had anything similar before. Therefore, let me keep telling. I frowned and even asked: “How, bloody hell, should I do it? Touch her shoulder and say these more than weird words?” But the answer to all my questions was the same: “Say to her: ‘You’ll manage the most important thing. Just believe in yourself!’” It was like something is boiling inside me. The closer the train went to my station, the stronger it was boiling. Here I should say that I’m quite a shy person and usually don’t...
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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 a whole story and I did it not bad to my mind, (here’s my first short film on the channel): now, I already have a good conception of what is edit and post-processing in videography. I have a solid understanding of how to not just paste music to the footage but combine video and audio into a whole artwork. Compare the previous video to my latest published one: I perfectly know that I’m much far from what could be named as a good filmmaker. I still have a lot of things to know and learn. But only who’s going will pass the way. No less important I love to go. For those of you who follow me no matter on which platform exactly, I prepared a small gift to thank you for your support and interest. That’s early access to my newest video called “Recollections of the sea”. (In fact, the footage for it wasn’t taken lately, the opposite, it’s been shot in 2011, 2012, and 2017 but I have finished editing just today.) It is accessible for watching only by a direct link so far. I will open it for wide access only on 27th April. Hope you enjoy it! And thanks to everyone who follows and supports me! There’s a lot of interesting ahead so stay tuned! Follow me on YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. If you want to SUPPORT my YouTube channel or me personally, you can do it here. Or you just...
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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. That wasn’t something supernatural, don’t count on it! 🙂 But it was a piece of help that came unexpectedly but exactly right on time from an absolute stranger. I was 15 or 16 and took part in something in the nature of the city’s field-and-track competition among high school students. I was never good at long-distance running so I haven’t an idea how I got there, perhaps our school just couldn’t find enough good runners for their team and therefore they took even me. That race was especially hard for me. Firstly, because I always was a highly responsible person. Respectively, I was doing my best and even more just not to come last. I managed it but of that, I was getting a problem with my breathing. After I crossed the finish line and was slowing my pace I suddenly started feeling an acute pain in my left side with each exhalation like something inside me is going to explode. So, I instinctively stopped letting air out and took an inhale, and after that tried to exhale one more time. Situation repeated. And one more time. I started to panic. Most of all because I realized that I can’t ask for help and even can’t tell what’s wrong with me. So, I was walking far and far from the main crowd, trying to exhale but the mentioned above was repeating time after time. My lungs were getting bigger and bigger, I was exhaling less and less air feeling the same acute pain, and didn’t know what to do. And when I started feeling that already the inhales bringing me pain, and I really thought that I’m going to die right there, in the city’s park, some old person who...
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