This panorama can be opened in two different resolutions. High resolution panorama with the best quality is about 7 Mb large and it is suitable for fast internet connections and modern computers. For slower internet and old weak computers we created the smaller low resolution panorama. Some small details have been sacrificed but the size of low resolution panorama is nomore than 2 Mb. | |
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We had been preparing for the shooting in St. Petersburg about a year. As early as summer of 2009 I was told that the helicopter excursion tours over the city in St. Petersburg were realized. I easily found the telephone numbers in the Internet and called there one day later.
For a long time we had been testing the equipment, preparing documents, adjusting permits, making contacts with the helicopter operators and, finally, one of our fellows - Dmitry Moiseenko - left for St. Petersburg for a test shooting. Unfortunately, it was raining and he just flew from The Peter and Paul Fortress to Pulkovo Airport. To realize the second test shooting, another photographer - Sergey Semenov - set off. In the beginning it just was dull but later the rain began again. But that time Sergey reached to make several panoramas over a take-off strip.
After that situation I understood that going that way we hardly would finish the shooting soon and decided to phone to a photographer whom I knew and who lived in St. Petersburg in order to find out what was the weather like there. "We are not lucky with sunny days", - I briskly said to the photographer by phone. "Shall we arrive in St. Petersburg and stay at a hotel and just wait when a sunny day comes?"
He answered gloomily: "I'm not sure this is the right way. In this case you may stay at the hotel a couple of months."
I was puzzled. We were not going to stay at the hotel for the couple of months. Then, we decided to conquer St. Petersburg by ruse.
We agreed with the helicopter operators as well as with a couple of our friends and the people whom we knew and who lived in St. Petersburg on as soon as the weather became better there, they would phone us in Moscow and we would take fast all we needed and would immediately leave. Nearly a week later in the morning the first phone call was received. "There is the sun outside our window and, if you hurry up and arrive before lunch time, you can shoot because the rain is forecasted in the afternoon."
But it was impossible because we needed a half of day just to get to St. Petersburg and another half of day to arrange the flight and shooting. We needed the whole day, the whole sunny day. And this is too much for ST. Petersburg! We had been packed and ready to go but we had to wait. The friends made a couple of calls but every time could offer only a half of day and that wasn't satisfied us.
One day, a month later, we were phoned by everyone all together: by friends, people whom we knew and even helicopter operators. "Today is still dripping from the sky but tomorrow... tomorrow you will be happy! Harry up!"
And we got off with a jerk. We had nearly missed our plane. Having come rushing into the check-in area of Vnukovo Airport 35 minutes before the take-off, we knew that there was no way to get tickets for the last plane to St. Petersburg. However, it took us five minutes of negotiations directly with the representative of the UTair Company (we are very grateful to him for that) to get boarding passes with no sits. But our troubles hadn't finished then. We had got two two-meter bars and a bag with different metal things weighted about twenty kilos. And it was important for us to take all those goods in a hand luggage. Widely opened eyes of the security men who were checking the hand luggage didn't show us anything good. And only the personal charm of Sergey Semenov let us not only to pass through the metal detector but also to convince the stewardesses to hide our equipment in their service cabinet on board.
As a result, in the evening we happily and safely arrived in St. Petersburg, slept a night and took a helicopter in the morning. The weather was amazing and it seemed to us that it would always be the same.
We successfully shot and landed near the Peter and Paul Fortress. Our colleagues-photographers were coming there too. They were going to shoot from a huge dirigible named Megaphone. They began to unpack the equipment and prepare the dirigible for the flight. They had been waiting for a good weather more than a month too and that moment they were preparing for the shooting and hoped to compensate the time lost. There were the operators from the First Russian TV-Channel and some other people from television.
By the afternoon we had decided to fly once again because very beautiful small clouds appeared in the sky and the helicopter stood right near us. We flew up again, shot about half an hour and came back to the Peter and Paul Fortress. And there was something unusual in the sky! From the side of the Gulf of Finland a huge cloud was coming closer and closer. It had already covered a half of the city when the second part was shown by the bright sun. The city was divided into two parts like with a front line. The wind rose.
We were landing when the people with the dirigible were finishing their preparations for the flight, but we definitely knew that they wouldn't be able to fly up that day.
That evening we left St. Petersburg accompanying with the sounds of thunder. The big rain drops were pattering on the train's windows but we were not upset anymore - our work had been done. A year of preparation, a month and a half of waiting for a good weather and an hour and a half of the flight over one of the most beautiful cities in Russia - all those were in past.
That was the way how we realized our virtual tour shooting over St. Petersburg.
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