Travel Photography
This is my favorite shot from the Gorodets living history festival in 2006. It always makes me think I should title it, “No shit, there I was…” The guys fighting are mainly college students who do this as a hobby. It’s live steel, dull weapons but otherwise real. My husband joined the group and got to find out exactly how authentic Viking re-enactment combat can be when he took an axe direct to his shin bone and had to be […]
Some boys working on a dredging boat in the Danube Delta, Romania. Dredging is highly disruptive of the fragile delta environment, but I love the timelessness of this photo – people have always worked on rivers, often starting very young. The boys could as easily have been working on the Mississippi as on the Danube.
Bucharest – Images by Kira Hagen I have my first photos from Bucharest up now… honestly didn’t take that many pictures in the capital; it’s the sort of place that walking alone with a DSLR doesn’t seem like the best of ideas. That said, the town has a crumbling elegance that was very graceful. Every corner held promises of strangeness and wonders – they used to call Bucharest the Paris of the East, though it made me think more […]
Just got back from a trip to beautiful Romania. I shot over 4,000 pictures on a 10 day trip and have a lot of editing ahead of me now! Managed to see a little of Bucharest, Transylvania, the Danube Delta, and the Machin Munti National Park, and overall had a very satisfying bit of travel.
We had a great anniversary day yesterday – spent it out at a middle ages festival that was like a mini RenFest but with more alcohol and more children with weapons. We got some very fine mead in a stoneware bottle, reuasable as an oil lamp with the appropriate wick, for 12 euros and sat on the river bank watching gothlings flock and sipping it slowly. Mmm… excellent stuff. Good mead is like distilled sunlight. There was a blessing ceremony […]
I’ve been pretty busy this week trying to get some web software working – back in April when this blog crashed so did 4 other bits of online software I was running, and I’m finally getting them back up to speed. Anyway, I’ve been working with some models this week, including Tony who wanted some shots in his Viking gear. I’ve got 2 uploaded currently but will get some more up shortly. I’m trying some new software called Zenphoto for […]
Had a friend from the States visiting this weekend, and got out to a couple of museums for the free Thursday museum nights. The Pergamon museum showcases architectural antiquities – here’s Dawn sitting on the steps of the enormous Altar of Zeus, which is not exactly the sort of thing you expect to find in North-Eastern Germany. 19th century archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann dug it up in Turkey and sent it home for re-assembly… rather makes you wonder how much the […]
Just got some older photos uploaded. They’re from the trip I took to the Seychelles Islands in early 2006 – midwinter holiday from work in Moscow to go meet up with family there. My dad was working on developing a marine protected area and it was a great excuse to Moscow’s January bleakness. At any rate, the islands are simply stunning. I don’t want to paint it as a paradise, exactly, because I find descriptions like that seem to de-humanize […]
Didn’t expect to be shooting disaster pictures when I went down to the weekly expat riverboat barbecue two weeks ago, but what looked to be a gas station was on fire upriver of us. It took the fire department about two hours to get it under control. Yesterday one of my new neighbors almost burned the apartment down, too, so it seems to be a season for fires. A guy upstairs fell asleep while cooking and there was smoke just […]