The Beauty of Nature on Display in Russia

I recently returned from a two week trip to Russia. Compared to the expedition and some other post expedition travels, two weeks really wasn’t very long… at least it didn’t seem very long as it flew by incredibly fast, but then again, the expedition flew by like a blur as well. Needless to say, I packed in as much as I could into those two weeks: from Russian language lessons and Moscow sightseeing, to countryside barbeques and a gigantic celebration of Russian war veterans. I also packed in as much as I could into my luggage. In Colorado, May is a tricky month weather wise. It can be snowing one day and sunny and hot the next. Case in point, the Saturday before I left for Russia, the mercury hit over 80 degrees and a few days later, Denver received 10 inches of snow. This left me scratching my head as to how to pack. My friend Elena said spring in Russia can be equally unpredictable, and considering how far north I was going to be, I decided I had better be prepared for it all.

Fortunately, the weather was beautiful the entire time I was in Russia; sunny and in the upper 70’s and even a few days in the 80’s. Everyone said it was unusually hot, but I didn’t mind even if I did fill up a good portion of my bag with clothes I never used. It did rain one evening and it made for quite a spectacular show. The Light Show, as they called it in Arzamas, a town of about 80,000 people 250 miles southeast of Moscow where I spent the majority of my time. The Light Show can be pretty amazing in this part of the country according to locals and I was happy to have witnessed it. I was even happier to have actually captured some of it with my new Nikon D600. It was actually my first attempt at trying to capture an evening thunder storm and I must have been lucky because some of the shots turned out pretty cool in my humble opinion. Stay tuned, there are a lot more stories, photos and even some video coming up in the following days and weeks but for now, I hope you enjoy some shots of the Light Show over Arzamas, Russia.