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.

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.

Twilight in Mestia, early Feb. 2011

 These 2 are from the roof of the lower of the 2 Chartolani watchtowers; the upper tower is the one at left in the top photo, giving an idea of just how safe - or not - I was.  The roof is shallow and wooden, so not at all slippery despite having half a foot or so of snow on it.  But there's nothing to stop you aside from friction should you slip towards the edge, and it's a long way down...
The 2-storey house at right in the top photo, with 2 sets of lower windows lit and 4 sets of dark windows above, is where Lali & I are staying (in an upper-floor room) with a super host family, our new friends in Mestia.
The lower shot is of most of the eastern side of Mestia as twilight fell, that magical time again.  I was shooting on a tripod, exposures of up to a minute or 2 in length, bare fingers getting numb as the evening deepened and the wind rose a bit on our high perch.  But nothing too serious, and the frames I came away with made the whole thing 100% worth it.  At extreme right, the white building is the new gamgeoba, or town hall, and left of that blazing away with light is the central sqiare and its park and hotel.  Mt. Tetnuldi with its pyramidal peak in the central background obligingly came clear of clouds during the shooting, a relative rarity at the moment.

Mestia Views 2, late Jan. 2011

 Top, from our host family's barn.
Middle, from an upstairs window.
Bottom, panorama from the newly refurbished Tetnuldi Hotel.

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.

Mestia, Jan. 25, 2011

Only one photo today, but it's assembled from three (same shot, different exposures) in the HDR style in order to capture the full range of tones such a contrasty scene offers.  Mestia, with Mt. Tetnuldi's pyramidal peak in the background, this midmorning.  This is also the first time I used my new circular polarizing filter.

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.

Mestia, late November 2010

 New digs, and a new little wood-burning stove in our bedroom.  The room itself is SO much warmer than our one in the last host family's house because:  1) it's a more normal size without being cramped; 2) it's heated from below by the family's main wood stove, so the floor isn't deadly cold; 3) only 1 of its 6 surfaces (4 walls, floor, ceiling) is an outer one; and 4) we have a hole in the wall for the stovepipe, allowing us to have the stove at all.  A VAST improvement in our comfort - it roars away and heats up the room in about 5 minutes flat, once I light it in the morning.

Below, us at the restaurant of Mestia's Tetnuldi Hotel, 24/11/10, our civil wedding's 2nd anniversary, a shot hand-held by me.  We look happy because we ARE.

Iced Fence, Mestia, November 2010

Perhaps more of a Christmas-themed image than the last few (at least for the minority of earth's population living in the Northern Hemisphere, where Christmas is in the cold part of the year, not the warm!).  Caused by a leaking water pipe, and delighted in by me in the morning when I saw it.

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.

Mestia@NIGHT, 1

The one great thing about our old host family was the view from the window.  This is it at night.  Not as simple as it seems at first glance - not only did I use a tripod and take a time exposure, but this is a combination of about 6 shots in what's called HDR, or High Dynamic Range, photography.  It captures the highlight AND shadow details very well - a much larger tonal range than a single shot can - and then puts them all together.  Cool.  More to come.

Mestia Panorama, October 2010

Not panoramically formatted, this is nonetheless a stitching together of several frames.  Again, from just outside where we used to live.  The clouds and snow are a bit over-white, but I like it anyway.