to the lake

Took a trip to the cabin. Of course taking the direct route is never an option so we took an alternate route which made us arrive hours later than we should have. On our way we took some interesting roads avoiding rain, found some abandoned churches and a schoolhouse. Overall it was a nice little outing photographing our favorite subject.

"goat paths" we use to get to locations

blue Ukrainian church - the first church on our roadtrip

schoolhouse

back in the trees, lies this huge beautiful catholic church

I think this may have been a religious camp...

flooded basement of a church

doing renovations

small town abandoned church

wanted: congregation

Here are the interiors of some of the churches I visited this past weekend. Exteriors can be seen in my last post: spring fever. Despite some of these churches looking like they are about to fall about on the ouside the interiors were beautiful. Some of them had signs of animals living in them but for the most part it just looks like they left and never came back leaving all the churches belongings behind.

spring fever

I had originally planned to head out a few weeks ago but we got a dump of snow which put a halt to all my plans. Finally the snow is fading and the nice weather continues. I decided to head out and photograph some churches - mark some more off my list of ukrainian churches to see in the province. I had a route all planned out thinking it would be a short but rewarding trip.

As per all my trips this one was an all day event and I made it to every church but two. The giant snow drifts prevented me from reaching two of them but I did get to see most of them. Some churches were already gone - but this is the reality of it. These rural churches do not last - being closed and abandoned many years ago they don't last forever and each year I see more and more of them disappear.

Anyways, here are the exterior pictures of some of my favorite churches from the trip - not all but a few. The interior pictures will be in my next post.

interior lighting

On my last trip out, I was lucky enough to be able to photograph some interiors of churches. This does not happen often because most are locked up and those that aren't are usually empty. Here are some of my favorites from the trip.

Please view full size to view best detail.

a slight detour from our route

My first official large explore of 2012!

I decided to head up to my cabin spur of the moment via the long route.  I had originally wanted to visit friends and explore nearby but quickly changed my mind deciding to take the extra long route to the cabin I wanted to try out my new camera and photograph places I had not yet seen. I found a few schools, lots of farmyards and of course churches. I got to revisit places I had not seen in years and photograph them with a new perspective. The snow was deep but the grids weren't bad. I had to hike out to a couple locations but I cant complain because I got to take some amazing photographs.

Overall the trip was a success considering it was spur of the moment, no planning and hardly any maps. I did get to photograph lots I have not seen and plan to return to some places I did not have time to visit. As a bonus i get to check off more Ukrainian Churches off my list!

churches of size

I had heard about a small Ukrainian church that I had missed photographing in an area I am very interested in. I spent a couple days planning a possible route and when the opportunity came up SaskUrbex and I went out to check things out. Because the light fades fast we had to start picking and choosing what we wanted to photograph as the sun was fading and the amount of churches and schools in the area had become overwhelming. We stopped to visit what we thought would be the most interesting. It was a very productive day and here are some of my favorite photos!

Highlights:

- finding so many churches
- accessing a large church, abandoned but completely intact
- finding the largest bible I have ever seen in my life
- photographing a very large furnace with coal bucket beside it
- ringing the bell in a bell tour
- shooting some video of these locations
- getting out of the house and hitting the grids!

bountiful prairies

Decided to go on a weekend trip to check up on some locations we have not visited in a while. We were very surprised by what we found. A complete ghost town now has people living in it again and fixing up the houses - never thought I would see this happen. We also found some other interesting things along the way and had a chance to do some photography before it got to cold.