This is a post to go with Street Art Contest #156 run by 
Last week my old friend from uni days with his wife visited my city, we arranged two meetings, had a great evening walk along the embankment, and explored all sorts of city's nooks and crannies, which the city can suggest... quite a lot.
The historical center area is a pretentious place, with expensive real estate, everything here is restored, painted, shining, shop displays, lights, and of course there is no graffiti, this is not acceptable and out of the question! But it is worth taking a few steps away from the storefronts and facades - and there begin ... well, of course, not slums, but nooks and crannies, courtyards ... anything can be found here, unusual, bizarre, artistic... and even strange.
In the photo above: twenty steps forward - and you come out onto Nevsky avenue, the main street. Well, if you take a dozen steps to the side, then ... look what an interesting place we found. It's actually a narrow alleyway, it was very dimly lit so there's no color to speak of, I've pulled the details out of the shadows and toned the photo. But this drawing was in any case monochrome. Someone might have sneaked in here in the night and splashed their terrible visions on the walls. 😎
This is how unedited photo looks like, just for comparison.
And the edited version, now details can be seen. Both sides, both walls were enriched with ink traces.
I regretted that I didn't take more photos, but we just didn't stay in one place for a long time...
Moving another twenty steps forward, we found ourselves in the courtyard of a residential building of an intricate, maze-like configuration. And there were cats!
The location was lit by a light bulb, so the photo got some color... not much tho :) I think the color is important for this photo, but I'm not really sure. How do you think?
Anyway, I also made a black and white version of this photo. But thanks to the previous color version, you know that the cat and those jellyfish-like fantasy creatures she's looking at are really black and white.
I was pretty much in love with this sudden little find.. No, its not a great huge mural that takes hundred hours from artist to create. But still...
Art also should be light and versatile, right? Besides that, it was all about a surprise match, really magic. I wish the city had less refined glamorous pathos but more little lively stuff like this, which you suddenly find in places where you absolutely did not expect to see anything like that. Koтарсис!
| location: | St.Petersburg, Russia | July 2023 | natural light |
| camera/lens: | Canon 5D | 16-35mm | raw-conv |
Thanks for walking with me, see you next time.
All images taken by me, copyright (c) 