Fires in the Snow 1: Lamproba, Mestia 14/2/2011

Here are the first few of my Lamproba photos from last night, the main church in Mestia, called St. George's.  Everyone brought bundles of sticks and lit fires on their family's communal graves, then drank toasts and feasted the dead.  Meanwhile, there was a normal Orthodox service going on in the church.  Apparently, the Church has decided to make peace with this Svan ritual, which predates Christianity, seeing nothing inherently wrong with it.  It was an amazing thing, in the -10 C temperatures, to see all these fires lighting up the cemetery.  My shots were all of 1 second or more exposure, with fill-in flash to freeze some of the action.  The middle shot is a TV crew recording the words of an elder as he says and does his thing.  Bottom, the scene from halfway up the church's tower.  It was all fascinating.