AD ASTRA II

Space Oddity

Yuri Gagarin Monument, Moscow

Monument to the Conquest of Space, Moscow

Though I'm past one hundred thousand miles

I'm feeling very still

And I think my spaceship knows which way to go

Tell my wife I love her very much "she knows"

Ground Control to Major Tom

Your circuit's dead, there's something wrong

Can you hear me, Major Tom?

Can you hear me, Major Tom?

Can you hear me, Major Tom?

Can you "Here Am I floating round a tin can

Far above the Moon

Planet Earth is blue

And there's nothing I can do.

[David Bowie, Space Oddity]

AD ASTRA

Moscow

Fujifilm X-T1; XF 35mm F1.4R; ISO 400; f 5,6; 1/350

Meanwhile in Russia
THE LAUGHING GOAT

Some of the picts I did for the guy with the goats...

Выбираю Жизнь

Спасибо Крису - сделали мне #артистический сайт (ссылка). Выкладывать пока особо нечего, положила свои любимые картины, наброски времен студенчества и мою любимую #фото серию (первую, но не последнюю) о #жизни и смерти. В серии фотографии с #Тихого океана, ##Карабаша, и... #Подмосковья - жизнь есть жизнь и торопится нам некуда - вечная спутница согласна подождать...

WINTER WONDERLAND

The last days of 2014 brought temperatures here in Moscow region of around -20°C so one had a lot of opportunities of doing this winter wonderland picture. 2015 started with temperatures of +2°C so at the moment all this was melting away. But the temperature forecast for next week is -25°C so I think I will have some more changes to get such pictures... 

Meanwhile in Russia
RANDOM PORTRAIT #1

Strolling through the heavily snowed-in Russian countryside on the last day of 2014 I encountered this guy. Seeing my camera he asked me to take some pictures of his animals. He is living in a small house together with eight goats, two black pigs, some cats and a lot of rabbits (he doesn't know anymore how many of them there are). Actually his animals have more living space then he. And he cares very much for them, constantly talking about them. Using all my rudimentary knowledge of the Russian language and his of the English one we had quite a long and interesting chat. At the end he offered to pay me 20 rubles for the pictures of his goats. I will give them to him for free... ;-)

WASTELAND II

Re-edited some pictures from the Karabasch series. Somehow black & white works much better (at least for me)... 

The mining town of Karabasch, situated about 1,800 km east of Moscow in the Ural Mountains, is one of the World's most polluted locations. A copper smelting plant is situated in the town since 1910, which is emitting extremely large amounts of pollution. 

Within 100 years, the factory has the surrounding area extended burned and covered with slag. Per year of operation, it encounters more than 180 tons of gas in the atmosphere, the back falls as acid rain in the local area back to earth. For decades, the soil in and around Karabasch is contaminated by high concentrations of highly toxic metals like lead, arsenic, nickel, cobalt, cadmium, copper and zinc, some of which exceed the maximum permitted limit for the two-to 150-fold. The iron content exceeds the norm by a factor of 500. In 1996 the town was officially recognized by the Russian government as a "ecological disaster zone", the UNESCO lists Karabasch as on of the most polluted locations on earth.