Foto's

I noticed the photograph of St Isaac’s Cathedral in St Petersburg that Alvin Brown posted yesterday, and in particular his comment that it was the most beautiful building he had ever seen. I agree with Alvin – it is the most beautiful building I have seen as well, anywhere in the world (at least as far as the interior of the building is concerned). My Lonely Planet guidebook describes it as “obscenely lavish”. For that reason I expected there would be lots of photographs of the cathedral’s interior on TrekEarth, but after scanning through all the St Petersburg photos I discovered that there was in fact only one other. So I will post one of my own as well. There is so much to photograph inside the cathedral, and so many different angles to shoot from, it is difficult to choose just one photograph that conveys the magnificent beauty of this building. I have many shots similar to Alvin’s so I have decided to post something a little different. My contribution is part of the roof detail in the same area that Alvin took his photograph. I shot this lying on the floor (one of the guards was giving me a very dirty look!) and then cropped it to make a more interesting perspective with the circle and the curves. I like the contrast between the pale blue ‘paintings’ (which as Alvin pointed out in his note are actually mosaics) and the gold mouldings and earthier colours in the rest of the photograph.