Letters from Svaneti, 1 & 2

Proudly holding last week's issue of Georgia Today with Letter from Svaneti No. 1 inside and my photo on the cover.  It just arrived in Mestia today.
Letter No. 2, meanwhile, is also now in print as of today, and available online here!

Mestia, Feb. 21, 2011

I took all 3 of these on my way home from International Mother Language Day, which we celebrated in Svan at Domink's school, No 2, in grand style - most of it his own doing.
Top 2 - minimalist snow and fence.
Bottom - yes, this overhang of snow and ice is high enough, and heavy enough, to kill if you're standing under it when it falls.  One of many in Mestia.

Ormotsi, Lenjeri, mid-Feb. 2011

Ormotsi is the Georgian word for 40.  This feast, held all over this part of the world, is 40 days from the death of someone.  First there is the funeral feast (gasveneba), then this one, then another a year after death (ts'lis tavi).  Except here in Svaneti, between the funeral & 40-day feast, there must be more, more... a feast for every Saturday between those two.  no wonder the women weep and wail when someone dies - a crazy amount of work awaits the survivors, which may drive them - despite financial gifts from all guests - into debt for months or years.
This ormotsi was for our host lady's aunt, who had raised her and her siblings when their mother died young. I should have been outside with the men, but was asked by our hostess to stay indoors with my wife and the other women, to be joined by other men, who never came.  So I was an honourary woman for the occasion, and glad enough to escape the cold and araqi - Svan moonshine.
The tables are planks of wood on sawn wood legs, covered with a roll of paper bound with a long spiral of thread.  If you're a VIP you get a real metal fork, and maybe a knife; lucky, and you have a plastic fork; the most usual utensil is a piece of bread with which you pick up everything your fingers can't put straight into your mouth from your plate, the more fiddly salads or thick soups, etc.  The food will never run out, and neither will the drink, as there are countless toasts to be made, and a feast can last hours upon hours in certain situations and conditions.  Crockery is a set kept by each village for common use, plates stored in wooden boxes for every wedding or funeral.
The middle shot is the village of Lenjeri, where my wife teaches English, its school half an hour's walk from where we're staying in Mestia.   The school is so close to the Mestia sign that it almost merges with Mestia, and the location of this ormotsi is about twice as far from our house.

Mestia Views, Feb. 2011

3 more recent shots.
Top:  our hosts, father (l) and son (r) cutting wood, from the 2nd story window just outside our room.  I regularly chop wood for Lali's & my little stove as well.  It's nice and dry, so it burns like a rocket.
Middle:  roster for supper...
Bottom:  A watchtower near our house, and icicles.

Fires in the Snow 3: Lamproba, Mestia, 14/2/2011

A final 3 from Lamproba Mestia 2011, an event which I'll never forget.

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

More from Lamproba 2011 in Mestia.

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.

Mestia Views 3, late Jan. 2011

 Top, Vitia taking another load of cow manure to the fields by bull-powered sled, where it will lie until spring and then be spread.
Middle, another vertical panorama of a view I love, the river and towers, all garbage blissfully snow-covered.
Bottom, view of the barn and town from our upper windows, a several-minute exposure on a tripod during fairly heavy snowfall.  Where's the falling snow, then?! Magically vanished by the long exposure, its only remaining effects a slight changing of the light in the distance and an overall softening of things.

Mestia Views, late Jan. 2011

 

Top, the area where Lali & I live, just right of the towers, shot from my school..

Middle, a view of the town as you enter it from the west,
Bottom, towers through a frosty window in the house where we live.
What's not to love about this place?!  Landscape wise, at least.

Twilight in Mestia, late Jan. 2011

There is a window of time, only minutes long, when the twilight is descending... the snow is still visible and the watchtower lights are coming on one by one.  Blues and yellows contrasting.  Streak of a car's headlights caught in my tripod-mounted slow exposure of a minute or so. Star from a tower light shining nearly straight at my lens.  Church lit in its own colour, more green.  In short, a magical time.  Before this, the lights haven't illuminated the towers; soon afterwards, darkness descends and much of the blue detail is lost.  Right time, right place.

Dance 2, Lenjeri Middle School, late Jan. 2011

 More of that concert, motion-blurred as before to show more of the action.

Dance, Lenjeri Middle School, late Jan. 2011

Some friends and I were visiting the school where my wife teaches English, in Lenjeri, 20 minutes' walk from our house.  The older students treated us to an impromptu concert with singing, poetry and dance, the latter which I captured in my usual motion-blur style.  Lots of fun.

Rustavi 2's March 2008 video from Ushguli, AT LAST!

I've had a copy of this soon after it was made, but the subtitles took a lot of work to add.  Every single one needed to be put in just the right place for the right amount of time - and there are about 140 of them.  Many thanks, Terry V, for your hard work with me to finish this thing off at last - I knew you could do it, and I didn't know anyone else who could!  (We changed the original Dean Martin song, quite distorted, for a better one, added all the subtitles and some photos - otherwise it's as it aired.)

The story:  I lived in Ushguli, Svaneti, Georgia, Europe's highest village, for the winters of 2007-8 and 2008-9, teaching English to all of its 50 schoolchildren for free in exchange for room and board.  My first TV event from there was the photos of a set of avalanches which closed the village off for about a month in total.  I took the photos, uploaded them to my blog, had a phone interview with Rusiavi 2 TV Channel, and saw it all put together on the next morning's news - very satisfying.  The TV people were also interested in how I came to live in Ushguli - not a common occurrance for a foreigner.  So they had to come up and film me, and eventually told me that they were on their way "for a couple of days".  I jokingly told the villagers, "A couple of days?!  It takes a couple of days just to get here and back from Tbilisi!  I hope the guys get stuck for a week!"  Well, 1 metre of snow later, that's exactly what happened.  Once they surrendered themselves to the inevitable, they were able to make such a good little documentary that it was chosen as one of the channel's 10 best programmes of the year!  So, at the end of 2008, newly married (civil ceremony, at least), Lali & I were called back to the studio to receive our prize, again on TV.  People STILL recognize me in the street in Georgia - "Say, you're that guy who was taking a bath on TV, aren't you?"  Well, everyone should be famous for something.  Lasha and Levan - great work, still reaping fruit.  Keep up the good work!

Cracked Paint, Mestia, November 2010

 More of an autumnal feeling than a wintery one, but I don't claim to be logical on this blog, I just post what I like, in general.  An abandoned house above where we are staying in the town.

K'ala and Ushba Vertical Panorama, late July 2010

(From now until January 16, I'm in Canada, but still posting Georgian images for now.)
Mt Ushba again, top centre, with part of the village of K'ala below, and the Enguri River.  Also taken on Kvirikoba day, also a panorama assembled from several photos.  Clouds coming would soon obscure the mountain as usual, but until then all they did was add more interest to the sky.

As for this day being Christmas Eve... no apologies for refusing to wish you a mere "Happy Holidays".  No, this season is called Christmas, like it or not.  Have a Merry Christmas.  Or don't take it off at all, if you're serious about protesting a Christian holiday.  Grinch, grumble, &c.

Mulakhi & Ushba Panorama, late July 2010

July 29 is Kvirikoba, possibly Svaneti's most important Orthodox festival of the year, held in and outside a little church high above the village of K'ala with a fabulous chased gold icon of Christ, one of the Orthodox world's most important.
This panorama I took on the way to that festival, near the pass between the villages of Mulakhi and Ipari.  Here we are looking back towards the former at centre, with Mt Ushba peering over the top in the distance just left of centre.

Mestia@NIGHT, 5

I think this is the best Mestia evening shot of mine so far - it's also HDR, as are the previous examples.  This one has it all for me:  depth given by the various sizes of towers, good colours and detail, nice blue mountains in the background, car headlights streaked into blurred trails of light.  It'll do.

Mestia@NIGHT, 4

You might SAY this town has no light life, but it depends what you MEAN.  For me there's plenty going on.  More HDR, this time from the roof of the last shot's barns, Tetnuldi at top as before.  The foreground this time is a little bare, though I did get more of the towers - I plan another few of these shots from various locations, always seeking the ideal one.

Mestia@NIGHT, 3

New host family's window view again, including the barns in the foreground and the town's lights above and beyond them.  The broken streak of light at centre right, above the greenish-lit church, is actually the headlights of a single car as it wound its way slowly across a night road, disappearing behind trees and then reappearing.  Presiding majestically over it all is Mt. Tetnuldi, above left of which is just visible the streak of a star's ordinary motion recorded during time exposures totaling several minutes.

Mestia@NIGHT, 2

More HDR (High Dynamic Range), this one from our new host family's upper floor window, of a single tower thrust into the modern age.