This post is also available in Russian 🐻
After wonderful months in Cyprus (which I still haven’t gotten around to writing about), we returned to Moscow. In February, in these latitudes, you basically have two options: drown yourself in wine or quickly escape somewhere nicer. We went with the latter.
But between the arrival and the departure to the Prague, I had to keep my hands and feet busy with something pleasant. Luckily, the Fuji service center quickly brought my camera back to life after it died on Cyprus.
The guy in the photo above is someone I met while working in Thailand. This is Danya. Danya, like a true street photographer, has a Leica. Once, Danya was kind enough to let me touch his Leica. So I immediately became a proper street photographer too — and captured the essence of Russia in a single frame.
Street photography is a really tough genre. In Russian, these photos are called “genre photos”, which makes it hard to know what people are even talking about. Here’s the deal: you have to walk around for a long time in bad weather, pointing your camera at strangers.
By the genre’s canon, shooting street on a Fuji cameta is not allowed. But since I don’t have my own Leica, this is what I got. And only Henri Cartier-Bresson can be my judge.
More than anything in the world, I want to get dust and moisture protection — for myself and for my camera — because living in Russia is definitely a job for the dust-and-moisture-proof.
Ducks are weather-sealed — so they wouldn’t understand my complaints.
But pigeons — they get it, that’s why they hide in arcades and passages.
It’s good that I’m in Prague now. It’s bad that Danya isn’t. Because if you want to shoot street, you need at least one Leica.
