Thursday, March 28, 2013

Red fox wedding.



Right around this time of year the foxes have their mating season in Kronotsky Nature Reserve in Kamchatka. Several times I was fortunate to be a "wedding' photographer for a fox couple. And during my shift in 2010-2011 I was waiting for my neighbor, Cosmo (Кузя in Russian) to play with his mate, Cosimina. But a new female fox appeared and their relationship was complicated and hidden from an outsider, such as me. Whenever I saw Cosmo, he pretended to be very bored, yawning and chasing fleas. He seemingly avoided his partners. Eventually a new fox, who I called Alisa, and Cosmo did have several cubs, four of which were raised, I have told about them in the summer of 2011 in this blog.








Today I will show you a marriage of another couple from the River Tikhaya (meaning quite in Russian) in Kronotsky Nature Reserve. I was a wedding photographer for them in spring of 2008.


This is a groom, Lizovin.




And this beautiful lady is a bride, Liza.





Walking together.

























A female fox often starts a chase, this way she is probably testing the health of the future father of her cubs. The pregnancy lasts for around 50 days, and the little foxes are born in may in deep burrows and stay there for the first month of their life. That year Liza and Lizovin raised 5 cubs.




A love triangle happened in Liza and Lizovin life as well. One day another female fox appeared and has taken Lizovin away for a day. But Liza was very wise, and she greeted Lizovin with happiness when he came back.

Below, you can find one of the photos from this story at high resolution, that you can use for desktop backgournds. I call that photo foxtrot on river banks.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

New expedition plans.



Many old photographers, including myself, remember the days of film photography with warmth. It seems like at that time I used to have more time to actually photograph then now, when I spend lots of time in front of computer screen... The winter has passed, it is almost time to depart for a new expedition, but nearly half of my last year's archive are still not processed:(

On a good side, I have almost finished a new book about photographer's life in Kamchatka.
The photo above is from a folder "Kenozero - 2012".



Past Sunday I participated in a program "Otkryvashka" (Открывашка in Russian, meaning a little discovery) on Echo of Moscow radio station. This is a program for children and youth, and our subject was "Discovering Kamchatka".

You are welcome to watch it online and read the record via google translator at this link. I have announced my plans to fulfil one of my dreams, to travel to Kamchatka from my home in Bryansk forest by land. For this adventure I plan to use a military type vehicle. I plan to to take a year for the trip one way, stopping in different Russian nature reserves and national parks, telling my readers about Russian wildlife and history of nature conservation. If everything works out as planned, after reaching Kamchatka, I will spend a year there, traveling across it and recording everything. And then, hopefully, I will take another year to return back on a different, northern route.

The picture above is taken in May, when the spring just emerges in Kamchatka.

Originally posted at following
http://shpilenok.livejournal.com/174547.html
http://shpilenok.livejournal.com/175979.html
http://shpilenok.livejournal.com/173998.html

Monday, March 11, 2013

Banks of the Geysernaya River, Kamchatka



Nowadays, while working on a new book about Kamchatka I often look through my photo archives. And I often think about how lucky I was to have a chance to work in the Valley of Geysers for several seasons in the past. It is a miraculous place. And the river in the middle of it, called Geysernaya (derived from word Geyser in Russian), is also miraculous. It is only 12 km long (7.5 miles) - but so much diversity exists along it.









On picture above, a famous volcanologists, V.A. Drozdin, who has worked in this area for many years, is crossing a river.

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Saturday, March 2, 2013

Collection of desktop backgrounds.




 I will always remember one episode with young group of tourists from Japan in Kamchatka. When these students arrived to Kurile lake in South Kamchatka Sanctuary one girl took out her cell phone and discovered that there is no reception. She showed the phone to other students and something very interesting started... They all were so excited, jumping around and hugging each other - they were happy that there are still places in our planet without cellular coverage and that they were fortunate to visit a place like that. 

According to Japanese students, I am a very happy person. And it is true. Since university graduation I did not live in a city for over a week. Most of my life I am spending out in the nature with only radio reception in the past, and satellite reception now. Even my house here, in the buffer zone of Bryansk Forest Nature reserve does not have a stable land line or cell phone reception. Sometimes, in good weather I do get cell phone signal on the roof of my house. But the signal is too week for 4G internet. Therefore I have been using quite expensive sattelite internet to publish posts in this blog. It is not unlimited, I had to pay for every bit of data send or received, for each comment posted. Over the time, internet became my largest expense...

But recently, one nice company have offered to sponsor my internet. РАДУГА-ИНТЕРНЕТ (Rainbow-Internet in Russian) is specializes on providing affordable sattelite internet across Russia. Their specialist visited my village and installed the equipment and now my internet is the fastest it has ever been.

The good news for my readers are that now, I finally can start a project that I could not afford before. I will start to upload high-resolution images for my readers to use on their computer desktops. Below there are several ones that my readers already requested, but I will continue and you will see more. 

If there are some images that you particularly like and would like to see in high-resolution - you are welcome to leave a comment to this or any other posts. Thanks again to РАДУГА-ИНТЕРНЕТ!














CLICK READ MORE BELOW for hi-resolution 2560х1600 images of the photos above suitable for desktop background.  Thanks again to my sponsor РАДУГА-ИНТЕРНЕТ.

Enjoy and contact me via shpilenok@mail.ru if you want to obtain a high quality print of any of them or other photos published here, at shpilenok.livejournal.com or at my photo-site shpilenok.com.

Another view of Kronotsky Volcano.


Friday, March 1, 2013

First day of spring in Bryansk Forest!

 
 
These are some of black-eared residents of Bryansk Forest Nature reserve. It is the first day of spring here, and the snow is slowly melting. Very soon white storks will come and the spring will fully bloom.
 
 
Originally posted at:
and