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Guest
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Tenn.Jer wrote:
Ilya, I really enjoy the slices of Russian life you post, both your travels and your day-to-day work. It's one of the great benefits of being part of this particular community, being able to see bits of life (through photography) from all around the world...so, my thanks for showing us your side St. Petersburg.
Thank you for the kind words. It's nice to see that my work is appreciated - well, far be it from me to claim any sort of exclusion, that's simply not true, but I'm glad to hear a detailed response too, not just the "Like" count.  I feel the same when I'm seeing the pictures of strange and exotic (to me) places posted here. Besides, I like to be an "ambassador" of sorts for my country - why not? It's not getting a lot of attention so it could use some.
Just in case you weren't joking, I'll tell you what little I know of local squirrel diets.
Well... 
I've often found bones and dropped antlers with toothmarks on them; antlers in particular are sometimes gnawed right out of existence. Apparently rodents will chew on them to get the minerals (particularly calcium) from them, something lacking in their usual vegetarian diet.
My mother's cat is sometimes licking her nail file after it has been used. The reason must be similar - after all, an animal can't just hit a drugstore and ask for a can of vitamin supplement, innit.
I've never actually seen one in action, so I was delighted when the squirrel, after rummaging around in the ground cover, took off up the tree with the bone held sideways in its mouth. A pity those three or four shots were blurry, it had that bulldog-with-a-bone look. I was tickled though, when he sat on the limb above me, munching on the end of the joint (probably the upper front leg bone of a whitetail deer) for eight or ten minutes. Then he ran down and stashed it again under a downed limb, carefully covering it with leaves. A cool behavior to witness...
...Show more →
I'm a little envious and, again, confused because I was never able to witness such an interesting behavioral pattern - or anything else of note for that matter. Whenever the wildlife sees me approaching, it usually gets into the "Panic / Escape" mode.
Gearwise, my copy of the original 100-400 was a little soft at 400mm, and I usually managed to remember to stop zooming in around 375mm or so. At the time I understood it to be just a quirk of that particular design, though later I saw countless examples where it was sharp right through the range. Possibly I found the softness simply because I expected it to be there, my problem with preconceptions from reading too many online reviews.. 
I thought that maybe that particular copy of 100-400 was not playing well with my particular camera and some AF-MA might have helped things.
Before I proceed with the shots from Finland and the up-to-date stuff - I'm very much willing to share it - here's a few pictures from the departure day, April 1st.
http://pp.vk.me/c629426/v629426358/4a227/EJyZ0oZy7t8.jpg
The old sea ferry terminal enveloped in dense fog ("One flew over Silent Hill").
http://pp.vk.me/c629426/v629426358/4a24e/NJoddvj79r0.jpg
Princess Maria ferry - a sister ship to the one we were using to get to Finland. The story - why we even went there - was kind of odd, I might add. We were supposed to travel there in December but on the day of our departure, the ship left 1,5 hours ahead of schedule (!) without advance warning (and even if we had had been warned, it would not have changed the situation much, because it was a weekday and we couldn't have deserted our jobs to rush to the seaport anyway). The reason was the bad weather and the imminent closure of the flood barrier that would've left the ship marooned on the inside for an indefinite period of time - the company said that they've warned as many people as they could. I presume they chose to lose 15 to 20 passengers rather than cancel the whole voyage for hundreds of people (that would've cost them a lot). It just turned out that me and my wife were in the "unfortunate" bunch (and about 15-20 people with us). Long story short, we've been denied a straight refund but they offered a compensation - the same voyage at any later date. So in the first days of April, we took it. Maybe it was for the better: prices have gone up since autumn, and Helsinki is much more pleasant to visit in April than in December. But I digress.
http://pp.vk.me/c629426/v629426358/4a261/CxVSMzmcETQ.jpg
Out of the fog suddenly rose the hulking monstrosity of the Western Rapid Diameter bridge over the Marine Channel. It's a huge, huge two-layer (!) bridge that would bar the way for the tall ships entering the city - now they can no longer enter the downtown, which is a damn shame. I felt that the city should've built an undersea tunnel instead - after all, that island to the left has already been connected to the mainland via the tunnel for years and years. Instead, we get a few new huge bridges that spoil the view quite a bit and interfere with the shipping. Besides, I couldn't shake the feeling that when the traffic is opened, we're going to hear of speeders ejecting from the causeway and falling way, way down to their deaths. Of course, there may be some clever solution to this in the works, but I'm not aware of it. Besides, how the hell is the police going to evacuate people from up there in case of emergency?..
... Yes, you can tell that I'm not pleased.
http://pp.vk.me/c629426/v629426358/4a30f/4WfXAG5QiNk.jpg
I have to admit, I love seaports. Growing up in a city with one (Vladivostok) surely helped. The one in St. Pete's is not as readily visible to the eye, being a deep sprawling complex spanning a few islands in the western part of the city (whereas in Vladivostok one could see everything - every pier, every ship, every stack of containers or every heap of scrap iron on the cargo bays - by just taking a ferryboat that traversed the Golden Horn bay and went to any of the outlying islands). Getting into the seaport - any of them, actually - is nigh on impossible for a layman (and probably rightfully so). Still, the harbour of St. Pete's has a little sweet spot in my heart as well.
http://pp.vk.me/c629426/v629426358/4a377/Vxpp37LzHxM.jpg
The Marine Channel bends southwest towards the harbour gate all the ships are passing through. It was really getting dark at the time so I was pushing the ISO ever higher. Here's the parting shot with my Tamron 70-300 lens at 200mm. In reality the colors were not nearly the same as Gimp's Auto Levels gave me, but I decided to keep it this way.
http://pp.vk.me/c629426/v629426358/4a380/7e1YyUo-yOg.jpg
Containers galore...
http://pp.vk.me/c629426/v629426358/4a392/-z0lcDTdTIQ.jpg
At the port entrance, there's still a welcome sign that says LENINGRAD - this was the name of the city between 1924 and 1991. There's at least one other such sign that I know of - on the southeastern railroad entrance. At least it was there in 2006. It looks like nobody is intending to take it down or replace it - on the contrary, it looks decently maintained. It's one of my favourite spots in the city.
P.S. The area I'm describing can be seen here: http://wikimapia.org/#lang=en&lat=59.901077&lon=30.220900&z=15&m=o for your reference. The ship's path was from NE to SW.
Edited by Guest on Apr 10, 2016 at 10:18 AM · View previous versions
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| Apr 10, 2016 at 07:46 AM |
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