Clashmaker.com

These posts are based on photos taken in 2004 when we still lived in Moscow, and I was a Tu-154 captain with Aeroflot Russian Airlines. They cover an exciting period in February and March of 2004, when our big move across Atlantic to the New World was just weeks ahead. Definitely, the whole thing was on a final stage of preparation, and our spirits were already bracing to ‘dizzying leap into unknown’.

Early that February I bought my first digital camera.

The idea was simple: to record (or, read it as this: ‘document for a future memoir’) some moments of our ‘present life here’. The first folder full of ‘goofy imagery of the first-time digital camera user’ was downloaded on the computer on Feb. 2, 2004.

Of course, I enjoyed convenience of the new technology a lot, and played with a new toy almost all the time. If I came out for a walk, I would take camera with me, and shoot everything around until a memory card would be done.

As on this particular evening of February, 14, when we the sky above Moscow was clear (quite a rare occasion in that particular winter), the air was crisp and bitterly chilly.

Hey, who else in the world other than ‘Higher Power’ would have told me then, that exactly on the same day but one year later I would be eagerly waiting for a moment the WestJet’s TLC building in Calgary be open to accept us, folks with individual job offers, - who were to become a newly hired by the company in the end of the day. (Since then we are called the ‘Valentine Day Class’).

All what I was pretty much certain of at the time - we were going to go to the country where the locals love hockey

So, you bet, - I had my camera with me when I sat in the reserve at the Sheremetyevo Airport’s Novotel - see, it even reflects in the window!

Or, when I was on the road, flying the Aeroflot’s scheduled flights.

‘Who knows’, I though as I flew over Moscow on my next trip, ‘maybe in a few years this vivid image of Moscow I observe now would wear down to an unreadable blur in my memory - which is not getting better as years go by - so, I’d better take a shot and save it on the computer’s hard drive’

With a camera you also have an opportunity to record something interesting, rare, or unusual

Isn’t that cool to see the Aerfolot’s Tu-154 seating on the ramp packed with the American Air Force airborne refuelers?!

(to be continued..)

Immediacy