Shashlik cooking process

This is quite an old video from last summer, its just only now I decided to montage it. Video shows how turkey shashlik is cooked – from burning wood and charcoal to roasting meat and serving it.

Last signs of winter

Couple of weeks ago we went to a Saidės sightseeing path, where we found slowly melting snow and ice near a Moluvenė streamlet, which runs into bigger Neris river. This path is special in one thing – to get to it you have to go through abandoned rehab camp, whose one building is inhabited by people.

Abandoned children’s clinic

Winter is stubborn for sure this year and after Fridays snowstorm, we went for an urban exploration. This time to Vilnius Antakalnis district, to abandoned children’s clinic. It was really worth the visit mainly because its in very good condition, full of interesting stuff and wasn’t visited by robbers or other sort of lowlifes. The main building has few broken-in entrances. Some of them have been blocked, but not the main door one, where we entered through glassless window. First of all the ceiling lamps greeted us with yellowish light, what disturbed us for some time. We thought maybe the building is being repaired or  guarded (there is electricity in whole building), moreover some sounds of pounding hammer were coming from rightmost part of the building. We took turn to left and straight to the basement.

Near entrance to basement

The basement is probably the most interesting place there, because all stuff from upper floors is crammed to small dark rooms. There we took this composition of medical chair, mirror and some old artificial flowers in blueish vase. The room also had some flabby balloons hanging from ceiling lamps. Like a leftovers of some party.

Medical chair

Then we went further to the right of the building to a room where lots of medical syringes were cluttered on the floor, as well as boxes of sterile water and other liquids, everything covered in ice, even the light bulb hanging from low ceiling.

Icy bulb

Unused needles box on top of heating pipes.

Unused needles

 

“Sterile water for injection” unopened packet.

Sterile water

Stacked boxes of medical liquids, soaked in water and ice.

Boxes of medicine

Paint splashes as a background for this large syringe.

Paint splashes

All types of syringes.

All types of syringes

Wheelchair and an armchair in another room.

Wheelchair and an armchair

In some rooms everything is covered with white powder, maybe from ageing ceiling coating.

Covered in white powder

Torn drum and other trash.

Torn drum

Basement connects two clinic buildings – main and the one with swimming pool.

Basement connects two buildings

There is electricity even in the basement.

The basement

The basement also has a room full of patient journals, x-ray photos, etc.

patients library

Surgery journal.

Surgery journal

Something splashed.

Medicine splash

After looking around the basement we went to second building, where swimming pool and rehabilitation cabinets are situated. This building is one floor height and it is very bright in there, because of windows in the ceiling.

Rehabilitation building

Coloured heating radiator.

Coloured radiator

The swimming pool is in good condition, except the graffiti paintings.

Swimming pool

After visiting second building we went back to first ones other floors.

Stairs

Dandelion blossoms in this strange creation.

Dandelions

Upper floors are mostly empty. And the sounds we heard before, probably were coming from outside.

Empty floors

Operating room was also empty, only lots of lamps on the ceiling.

Operating room

Monster plants occupy one room.

Monster plants

This one had to see something bad…

Scared

Another stool in the middle of hallway.

Stool in the middle of hallway

Vintage hand dryer.

Vintage hand dryer

We also found some glass syringes in top floor.

Glass syringes

Northern Utena nightsky

In the weekend we took a trip to my home town Utena. The weather was perfect – cold and freezing wind, clear skies. In city area sky was polluted by lights, but not that much as in capital Vilnius. Near northern city limits I took one photo depicting little house against starry sky. Then we drove a bit further away from city to Sudekiai village. 10km from Utena makes a huge difference in amount of light pollution. Milky way is even visible to naked eye here, not talking about camera sensor, which sensitivity I bumped to 5000. It was a great time to test ISO. I’m not a fan of high values but I had to try and I can say I was surprised. Being able to compare to much older and lower class camera 450d – the noise levels at 1600 were much higher than 60d 5000, heck – even 12800, which is not recommended, is not that bad if no post-work is involved.

Starlit house

Nocturnal Trakai

This time we took different direction and travelled to Trakai and drove around Galvės lake. First of all visited abandoned buildings near castle, the view wasn’t very special in a night time, so we went to an Užutrakio mansion, which was my biggest aim for that night and I was hoping for some really nice shots. Well, I cannot complain. There I took these photos. One picturing the mansion itself and other one shows Trakai castle from a far and a starry night sky. One thing was new to me – the lake, more accurately the ice emitted some very creepy low-frequency sounds every half a minute. During the day its fine I guess, but in the middle of a night when all senses are heightened its uncomfortable.

Nocturnal Trakai

Neris at Stirniai

That night we set off for abandoned rehab center “Aušveita”. The result wasn’t very pleasing, because not only that one building was occupied and light was coming from the windows, something near it was blinking red, so we thought that the area was guarded. We went around it and down to the Neris riverside, where huge ice debris (aprox. 1,5m in height) was lying. This photo was taken on top of one of those ice blocks. The light on horizon is coming from Vilnius which is ~20km from there.

In the fog

During the last minutes of 2010 January I took this photo. 2010 01 31 11:55:42 PM to be exact. And this is one of the first best of my photos, just as I started to get used to dslr, having it a little bit more than for one month. I can still remember that late evening. I was about to go to bed, walked to window and took a final peek to the outside through curtains and was quite astonished by this thick fog, so thick that the visibility was 10 meters at most. I hesitated for some time, but then decided to go out. It felt really magical to not be able to see anything further away, the sounds also were somehow strange. There was no sign of living creature, just street lamps and also small moon at the top. Luckily some cars passed by so I was able to photograph lamp traces and make this hazy photograph. As soon as clocks passed midnight, the fog evaporated in minutes.

Fading fog

Walk a dog on a sunset

When I started living in Vilnius in 2011 I continued taking photos. Everything and every place there was new for me. This shot was taken on a nice autumn evening near White bridge (“Baltasis tiltas”) on a field where people fly their kites, walk dogs and even launch full scale hot air balloons. West horizon here consists of Barclays office block, Geležinis Vilkas bridge and television tower. I was lucky enough to catch all this in one shot.

Water wall

A quite old photo from spring 2012 was taken on a Kavarskas hydro power plant, near Anykščiai. In this photo I tried to depict a lone tree in front of some strange cloud/foam-like wall. What it actually is – a view looking downwards to gurgling water sliding from hydro power plant and on top of this water and in the middle of concrete wall somehow little tree growing its branches.

Harp view

Harp or “Arfa” in lithuanian was a huge 29 floor building to be built in Vilnius at 2009, The company building it went bankrupt, so its empty frame has been standing since. The abandoned construction site can be visited by anyone not afraid of warning signs. Vilnius panorama is quite nice form such heights.

Buick Regal

The frost didn’t miss this ’75 Buick Regals’ front end and painted it with beautiful snowflake paintings. This model is standing at Belmontas in Vilnius on a small showcase of classic cars.

Bright night

I’ve been looking for a night photography for a long time, but since I sold my kit lens 18-55, I wasn’t able to take wide photos or even focus at dark with nifty fifty as its narrow viewing angle and a lack of focus distance screen completely prevented taking night photographs. Another hard thing is weather – its really rare for a clear sky at night in this winter. Either its cloudy or its not a weekend, because I don’t want to interrupt my work day sleeping hours. This time temperatures went down and skies cleared out, so we decided to go to nearby hills and try our chances. Everything was good, and the forest air wasn’t cold at all. The only one drawback was moon. It was so bright that its light covered smaller stars. I wasn’t able to get even a tiny glimpse of Milky way in long exposure photos, just this kind of city view. Also we realized that even if we are high enough on the hills the city was too close – it also emitted large amounts of light. So our next task is to wait for clear moonless sky and maybe go further away from city.

Rusty firetruck

Russian fire truck ZIL-133 has been out of use for a long time and rusted pretty badly. The petrol pump standing near isn’t doing better either. Only snow and ice preserves their decayed components.

DAF

According to wikipedia DAF is a Dutch truck manufacturing company. This steering wheel detail is from military medicine bus.

Winter tank

This weekend I decide to go to Military machinery museum located in Vilnius at Olandų street. The second time. First visit was in summer and wasn’t as interesting, because now in winter it was very cold and no people around, so I could inspect the vehicles more thoroughly, get behind the wheel etc. This museum consists of many military vehicles exhibitions: couple of tanks, armoured personnel carriers, tracked transport vehicles, trucks, medicine buses, SUVs and such. If anyone visits Vilnius and is interested in military I highly recommend to visit this museum.