One of the things I love about travel is the chance to see other places and culture through my own eyes… a visit to Moscow in Russia was certainly one of those times… I must admit to having a few pre-conceptions of Russia from watching too many Hollywood movies in the 90s… basically my view was very bleak, a bit like this image
I’m happy to report that I was wrong… one of the advantages of travelling in summer are the very long evenings… it meant lots of time to explore once our work was completed each day… since our hotel was near Red Square I was able to visit on multiple occasions to make the most of varied weather conditions and what a variety we had…
On the first occasion, I wandered down in the early evening since I had plans to meet a colleague for dinner… I was traveling with a simple kit of D800 & 24-120mm F4 lens… I just grabbed the polariser as well since there were no clouds in the sky and no smog as well thanks to recent rains… got quite a few shots of the vibrant colours around Red Square and Saint Basil’s Cathedral…
On the second evening, we got back from the customer site a bit later and by the time we finished dinner, the sun had already set (again not much cloud)… not knowing how the week would progress, I decided to head back for some Blue Hour photos (with tripod) and was very pleasantly surprised to find the square and surrounding buildings very well lit in the evening…
Red Square during Blur Hour showing the Kremlin, National Museum and GUM Department Store
For the third evening, we were joined by one of our Russian colleagues for a walk around (surprise, surprise) Red Square… since there were a lot of clouds around, I brought the tripod and a 5-stop ND filter to try some longer exposures… this is when I took the first photo in this blog post and we got wet approx 5 minutes later when the heavens opened… we decided to head for dinner during the rain and by the time we finished, the rain was gone and Blue hour was beginning again… this time with a ton of clouds which gave a really nice texture to the sky… I told my colleagues I would be a “while” as this was too good an opportunity to pass up and I spent the next 2-3 hours wandering around Red Square and surrounding areas taking pictures… the city lights made it possible to still capture the clouds well after Blue Hour had ended and I also played with some car lights and reflections… overall a very productive evening…
On our last day in Moscow, we were scheduled to fly out at 7pm so had the day to do a little more sightseeing… the forecast was for rain so we planned to visit some of the metro stations (Moscow Metro is known for it;s architecture in the stations) and also the food market… the weather was much better than forecast so we ended up doing some other stops along the way… I think my colleague who was travelling with me was a little surprised by the amount of walking we did though I was still keen to see as much as possible… the food market (Danilovskiy Rynok) was fascinating with all the different fruits / meats / spices which are all familiar yet different … well worth the visit… of course, we made one final stop in Red Square on the way back to the hotel before catching the cab to the airport…
Overall, I found the visit to Moscow far exceeded my expectations and I look forward to the chance to return and explore other areas around the city… where have you been which surprised you?
See full gallery of images
https://www.keithwilson.photography/moscow