St Petersburg with the7i

In the early eighteenth century Peter the Great started the building of St Petersburg as we now know it. He, and successive rulers continued the building of lavish palaces and museums until the revolution in 1917. In the second world war St Petersburg was beseiged for nearly 900 days. The population and treasures suffered enormously although many were preserved by being transported elsewhere in Russia or were removed by the Germans once they had entered the city and before they set fire to palaces, etc. The last 50 years have seen a wonderful restoration exercise - with new buildings, rooms and works of art being completed every year.

Photographically it's stunning. However, many of the rooms are so vast that flash (I have the 3600) will be inadequate or will reflect of the gold. Flash is not kind to artwork so most of the pictures were handheld - image stabilisation would have been nice. Another problem was use of wide angle - so the distortion didn't make getting correct verticals any easier!

http://www.fototime.com/inv/9780F8500E69A02

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Sandy

Not to nitpick here, but AFAIK German Army has never entered St. Petersburgh in WWII. There was app. 1000 day blockade and the city was under constant artillery and air bombardment, but the city never fell.

Sandy wrote:
The population and treasures

Member said:

suffered enormously although many were preserved by being
transported elsewhere in Russia or were removed by the Germans once
they had entered the city and before they set fire to palaces, etc.

Click to expand...

Sandy,

You've done a great job to show us one more beautiful place. Like another poster said, "this is the cheapest vacation I've ever been on". Thanks for sharing.
As far as the verticals go, and barrel distortion, Check out this thread:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1024&message=9106414

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Regards,
Matt
Can't we all just get along?
http://www.pbase.com/ph0t0man

Stan P said:

Not to nitpick here, but AFAIK German Army has never entered St.
Petersburgh in WWII. There was app. 1000 day blockade and the city
was under constant artillery and air bombardment, but the city
never fell.

Click to expand...

Yes, you are quite correct - I should have said it was locations adjacent to St Petersburg, such as the Catherine Place at Tsarskoe Selo and the Summer Palace at Peterhof that were occupied and looted.

Thanks

Sandy

Stan P said:

Sandy wrote:
The population and treasures

Stan P said:

suffered enormously although many were preserved by being
transported elsewhere in Russia or were removed by the Germans once
they had entered the city and before they set fire to palaces, etc.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Nice pictures, Sandy!

We were there back in 2000 and are going again this Fall (with a better camera).

Here is a picture I took in the Peter and Paul Cathedral



Of course I also have a shot of the KGB building. A non-descript six-story edifice which was said to be the tallest building in St. Petersburg -- from the upper floors you could see all the way to Siberia.

Len Taylor

Member said:

Yes, you are quite correct - I should have said it was locations
adjacent to St Petersburg, such as the Catherine Place at Tsarskoe
Selo and the Summer Palace at Peterhof that were occupied and
looted.

Click to expand...

Oh, yes, the Peterhof. It is hard to imagine better location for landscape photography than the English Garden there. I much prefer the its natural spontaneity to artificiality and all the sculptures of the French-style gardens.

Stan P.

ph0t0man said:

As far as the verticals go, and barrel distortion, Check out this
thread:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1024&message=9106414

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Regards,
Matt

Click to expand...

I had a look at that 2 or 3 months ago but couldn't get it to function, needed PTstitch and that wouldn't co-operate. I tried again thanks to your reminder - no luck but I'll keep at it. Almost certainly my lack of computer savvy.
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Sandy