It has been a long time since I’m visited Moscow and recently just look through the old photo files on the disk and what i found is a memories.
It was a trip for work actually not even much a holiday but apart from stressful situation to get the fashion shooting done for Wallpaper* magazine, I would say it pretty much a HOLIDAY for me. Moscow is very interesting city, my top favorite things here is Architecture, Sculpture of the important people and also monument around the city too. I know lot of you guys especially American would list this country on last as a holiday destination.
And well if you wanna know they are a dark side of the city too. Apart from beautiful building, It is a traffic that is very bad start from 4pm to midnight. That I think it might be a result of road systems in town that build to be a circle of ring road from the centre and sure too many cars in here as well. The guys that is our Russian guide, (we need a guide to survive here as no one speak english! I mean very few) called their own town as ‘Lord of The Ring’ town dub from the road system…
I was in Moscow probably the best time of the year! Well, how could you imagine how hard it is to live in temperature -30ºC until you try once and this i called it the best time of the year to experience it. It was in late December and early January. All the lake and all canal already turn to be an ice.
The hard part to live here i think it is the night! It was so cold that i could not even walk round with bare face and nothing on my head. I’m sorry PETA but I think this is the place that seem resonably to wear ‘Animal Fur’ to keep you warm. I mean yes you could wear some man-made fabric but that I’m sure would require so many layering and might cost you more than having a one off fur coat that would be with you for a lifetime. Anyway, PETA I only have rabbit fur hat! Apart from that scarf and coat are just wool, and a nylon bomber jacket inside with 4 more cotton layering, ok!?…
The sun in here at this time of year would come out around 5hrs that it! I think it about 9am. to 2pm. then it start to get dark as a night. This is the reason why lot of picture I took look very much like sunset picture, eventhough it support to be sunrise at about 9am. or 10am.
One of the most beautiful thing in here is the tube station or they called it METRO. It is decorated with a real palace touch for common people. Every stations has a different theme of story but they are all contained hi-standard luxury apart from the train itself, well, a bit more communist minimalism theme in green army style train.
We decided to go for a fast food for a meal. Even though, McDonald is just round the corner but we decided to have ‘Kumpir’ or Jack Potato that is quite popular fast food in Russia. These Jack Potato shop in Russia is like a McDonald that happen to be in every street near you and easy to get and for me look more healthy than BigMac for sure.
Here a link to some our fashion picture for Wallpaper* Thai edition, Russian issue. It was a real hard work againt the cold weather. I remember that our 120 film camera stop working because of the very low temperature and poraloid seem useless as it not develope any picture on it and adding to all those troubles our models start to had problem with the cold as well. Luckily that our 645 Digital camera managed to safe our trip!
We did this at the roof of my apartment building, preparing all hair and make up in my room. The model Anna she is really nice as it is so small budget shoot and she agree to do it, We’re very appreciate for it much, Thank you Anna :-)).