Yuzhno - July Week 2 - Visit to Kholmsk.. town

After leaving the beach, Sergey suggested to visit the town for some photo shooting... its only 15 minutes away from the beach....


This is the town of Khomsk...


A small park by the sea.


Looks like a lighthouse.. at least to me.


The deep blue sea.


Fishing for ... Halibut?


My model of the day.


Cornara again...


Sergey with his Canon EOS400D


Driving lessons


Stop for speeding?


Not so sure what is the thing behind the bicycle... but like this picture.


..... some lady selling some kind of beans... looks like coffee beans.


The city folks at the park.

Yuzhno - July Week 2 - Visit to Kholmsk.. beach

Sergey and Dimitri decided it is time to visit Kholmsk since the weather is perfect, 22-25C, so we travelled in 2 cars to this other part of Sakhalin about 100km away from Yuzhno. It is actually the west coast.


None of these roads are good for 160km/h.. but they sure looked like a nice bend.


A view from the slightly elevated part of the way to Kholmsk.


Yours truly with his new toy.


Try out the 50mm F1.8 lense with a macro shot.


Alot of unloading work, glad none is left over.


First view of the sea.


crystal clear water...


some ruins.. not?


the quiet part of the beach.


A good place to park.


these tall grass doesn't look like there are snakes in there, so I roamed freely around.


Me and my zoom lens.


This is the people ... minus Sergey


This is the team.. minus me.. which picture looked better? this or the one before this?


This is Cornara


This is some folks on the quiet part of the beach


Kid in the land reclaim business


Digging more sand..


Lil girl, lil boy and his dog having fun under the sun.


Creative push-ups..


This is the ... more lively part of the beach.


The beach..


Blokes collecting some ... shell like stuff.. can can be eaten.


Treasure hunters...


Looking for something..


Nice view?

Yuzhno - July Week 1 - The zoo again..

Again.. another sunday afternoon without anything to do... so walked up to the nearby zoo...
You will notice that I do not know the names of these animals... it is simply because everything there is in Russian, with only one or two exceptions.


No, she's not part of the zoo.. I'm sure she's just a visitor.. and yes she looked kind of pissed off ..maybe because holding her pose too long.


This is actually quite far away so I had to zoom about 300mm.


Zoom and crop.


Not sure what is it doing, but this is supposed to be a duck.


Deer?


Was trying out some technique to make the cage invisible, and no, I did not poke the lens thru the cage.


This is the same three-legged wolf I met in Winter... still looked like a hunter. I want to get a dog that look like that someday but with four legs.


She's got to hop around with her three remaining legs.


A hallucinating camel..


A sad horse.


Some wild flowers.


Flowers..


Maybe a parrot?


These kittens are also not part of the zoo, found them in a box beside the monkeys.


This looks like a toad?


Finally manage to wait till it opens its small eyes.


A bird thru a glass cage / container


I know this one... Taeniopygia Guttata


A small house for the zookeeper.


A flower


Some flowers


This lady is not someone I know.. but I took a 300mm zoom on her to test how sharp can a 300mm shot without IS and tripod be. Ok, maybe I should pick a different subject next test.


This two flers.. hmm.. thought I am some photographer, so asked me to take a few pictures for them and send to their home address, told me their address in Russian... tried to write down in my pda but this English-Russian communication thing don't work so good. Also, they thanked me with a hand shake like my hands are the pinchers of a Sri Lankan chilli crab and theirs are the tool to crack open it.