Below are some of my final pictures from Moscow. The city today is unrecognisable from the snowy wasteland we arrived to in January and there is no doubt that summer has arrived. I’m back in the UK now and looking forward to the busy sports season ahead. At the moment I have a few ideas of how I’m going to present my favourite work from the past 9 months but it’s going to take a while as I want to make it’s something special. I’m afraid it’s back to cricket now…
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A few pictures from the Victory Day Parade in Moscow yesterday. We got up far too early, it poured with rain, and nothing actually happened until 10 o’clock but it was impressive to watch the tanks, missile launchers, jeeps etc roll by. From our position we only saw the mechanized part of the parade so when we got home we watched the highlights from Red Square where 14,000 troops had paraded around looking scary.
Below are some pictures of one of a few veterans I met yesterday and walking around Gorky Park later it was nice to see a lot of young people giving flowers and other gifts to veterans and their families. Quite rightly, they have a huge respect for the men and women who served in their army and it was encouraging to see such warmth being shown towards them. I have a lot of work to share from my recent ‘Stans’ adventure so get excited, tomorrow I’ll be blogging about Turkmenistan!
Did a second edit of my pictures from Sunday night again yesterday and came across a few which I overlooked the first time. The first set here were all developed with a slight desaturation so I thought I’d try these few in black and white. I’m not a big fan of putting pictures into B&W for the sake of it but I do like the feel it gives to images taken at nighttime. Recently I’ve also learnt the importance of getting other peoples’ opinions when editing your work. I took the set from Sunday into the AP office yesterday and Sasha pointed out the flash I’d caught in the 1st picture here which creates that nice shadow on the wall. I’d seen it before and hadn’t really thought much of it but on reflection its grown on me and I’m glad he pointed it out.
Yesterday was Easter Sunday in the Orthodox calendar so at midnight on Sunday morning we headed to a small church near Sukharevskaya metro to watch the procession and the service. Now I’m not in the least part religious but I must say I absolutely love their services. People were standing outside holding candles before the service and they then followed the procession of clergymen around the church which marks the beginning of the service. The atmosphere in the church is amazing; the choir sings something wonderfully incomprehensible and the room fills with smokey incense. I wasn’t able to make many pictures inside the church as it was absolutely rammed with people but it was great to experience it and I managed to find a few nice moments outside the church.
