The view from the hotel in Kiev in October on our second and final day there.








I think all the different things made of little painted wooden eggs (including a classical painting interpreted through eggs that was anachronistically placed in the upper level of an old cathedral) were part of a somewhat recent art installation by an artist inspired by traditional Ukrainian painted eggs. That was my impression.




About fifteen seconds after I took this photo a man who worked in this monastery walked up and placed a 'Don't Feed the Birds' sign a few feet from this little girl. She looked sheepish and dusted her crumb-covered hands off on her pant legs. I thought the man could've done without the attitude; they're just birds.








This is me forcing my way into a nativity scene.






We all kind of got our attention caught by these workers on the roof. I don't know what they were doing because I, like all the other Americans, was just stuck on their lack of safety gear. When they stood up and straddled the little pointed roofs you could see their feet slipping a bit on the metal.










I used lunch time as a final chance to take a tiny walk around a different part of Kiev. This was the hill of Important Man on Horse and Nappy Strays.








The final stop on the Kiev tours was this very nicely-done WWII museum. Solemn and chilling.








Kiev sent us off with a lovely sunset.

Bless Kiev. I was there for two days around Halloween, 2012. Kiev was a respite from St. Pete. Kiev was warmth, dryness, friendliness.



...Cute dudes, hills, greenery. 9 degrees in latitude was two months in back in time, to fall. It was refreshing, a glimpse into a world of possibility.*



*Total bullshit, btw. The kind of delusional bullshit that seizes my mind when I travel to somewhere warm and dry from somewhere cold and rainy. I also felt pretty high on life during my little San Francisco 'time out' from Oregon's shit rain.




We got herded around in these foreigner clumps...








I love the smell of ancience and wax and solemnity in orthodox cathedrals.




Once the tour guides let us free I set off solo into the warm** Kiev night with my camera, shitty tiny tripod, and cable release. I somehow unscrewed and lost the little cap from my cable release when I was at the ballet in September, and since then I've just had to let the metal post dig into my thumb for as long as I have the shutter open.

**By warm I mean not completely freezing.






God this city was beautiful. I'd never before thought about how much character hills add to a place. Add a river running through it and wow. Also I like how that tree seems to be at the perfect distance for the infinity focus of my 20mm.




We're on such a packed schedule with these trips and everyone is so exhausted that I think only the most driven kids actually learn anything on the tours they drag us through. Because of this I slept through much of the Kiev bus tour and so missed any explanation there may have been as to why there is a Soviet-looking monument framed by a giant artificial rainbow and flanked by bumper cars.




Bumper cars.

I'm still surprised at the power of invisible feelings. Like awkwardness. It's not really something that can be felt with any of the five senses directly, but I've started noticing more situations where it is totally palpable, hanging in a room or in a space between people. I used to think it was purely in my head: You are imagining the situation to be awkward, Maria. YOU. If you just chilled the fuck out it'd be fine; poof, no awkward. I've since realized that the reality is a little more nuanced. I've learned this from situations into which I have strode, confident and relaxed, only to be assaulted by a wave of awkward, from out of nowhere. Before I've even said anything, some kind of carnal communication rooted in the base of my biological being has passed between me and the other person, and it has said, "This shit is going to be awkward now."

Another similarly invisible sensation is the one between photographer and subject. We all have those acquaintances who just KNOW when you've got a camera pointed at them, whether it's from across the room, out the window, whatever. You try and take a candid shot and up/over they look, into the camera. Making faces. Fucking everything up...

I bring this up because I saw these guys early in the airport one day in October, and I thought for a while about whether I was actually going to take their picture. I knew they'd wake up when I did, and I was trying to figure out if that moment would be after I'd already taken the picture, or if merely pointing the camera would be enough and one or more of these dudes would open their eyes from uneasy airport slumber to see someone seven feet away pointing a camera at them...



I clicked the shutter, dropped my camera back to hip-level, and had a second or so to move away and pretend to do something else before the first guy woke up.

On the other hand, I haven't observed this same issue with people with camera phones. Somehow the knowledge that you don't have to stand and fiddle with aperture and focus, and the absence of that loud snap of a mechanical shutter... maybe it makes those photographers more relaxed.

...So maybe it is just me then, standing in airports or on street corners or at room edges, nervously thinking about shutter speed and lighting and composition, emanating invisible rays that scream I AM TAKING YOUR PICTURE IT SHOULD FREAK YOU OUT BECAUSE I AM BEING WEIRD ABOUT IT.

Life. Life is for getting better at these things.






Next up are the photos from Kiev. I loved Kiev. I'm excited to have finally gotten around to putting those photos up here. Some initial photos, with more on the way:

There were maybe three months of little sun, but now we're starting to see these kinds of sunsets again.










On this night I discovered the hefty skeleton apartment keys are handy for opening beer bottles.








Sometimes I don't remember the crappy weather in places I live because I have no desire to go out photographing in it. I made myself hunker down under an umbrella for this photo so I could remember the months of rain.
















I should do a whole series on Petersburg's abandoned cars.




There's a large outdoor market in the northern part of the city where "like, all of St. Petersburg just decided to go out and have a garage sale." Our conversation teacher told us a story about a former student who found a remarkable Soviet music box/cigar case there, and following that this kid from LA spent almost every weekend for the rest of the semester there.