On the chase of abandoned buildings and autumn colours.
Friend of mine was complaining that my articles have become really depressing lately because all I share are those gloomy black and white photos. Now winter is really coming here and the colourful leaves are just a memory from not so distant past. So it’s just the right time to share some colour as well.
As it is with Estonian weather there are only few days of sunshine in the autumn, mostly it’s rain and clouds. Fortunately there was just a single day during a weekend where it was promising sunshine, so we didn’t waste any time and continued our discovery trip from where we left off last time.
This time I had loaded my camera with some colour film. Just because I did finally want to capture some of those elusive autumn leaves and to be honest I was missing a bit of colour lately.
So the first stop was the Pärispea Military base which we explored last time. Back then we arrived fairly late at night so it was all dark and gloomy and honestly, quite scary. This time we got there in the middle of the day, it was nice and sunny, so we got a totally different feelings from the place.
Instead of scary it felt rather warm and cozy instead. Not sure what it is with the sunlight glowing through board cracks, but they are somehow relaxing.
Took me a while to figure out how those dots on the wall formed. But they are just pieces of broken glass on the floor which reflect the sunlight to the wall.
So the whole military base is next to the sea. There are pretty nice views coming from those windows. But as the beach was fairly close, we didn’t stop there are checked it out first hand.
We were bit disappointed to learn this part of the base does not extend very far. Although there are some more buildings nearby, not all of them are exactly abandoned and not really well preserved either, so we carried on to see what else we can find.
This is a place called Pärispea Fish Farm. It dates back to soviet times as it was part of the “Kirov Kolkhoz”, built in 1979. It was designed to farm trout using seawater pumped directly from the sea into the special ponds.
Apparently it still operated fairly recently, but right now, it looked liked the pond and water supply channels had dried up. It did seem all but abandoned, and there were “for sale posters”. We still didn’t skulk around for too long and carried on.
I later checked the ads from real-estate sites. Found some, which claim that it is very possible to restore the whole factory to full functionality. Will this happen or will it become another abandoned landmark, only time will tell.
As we had been running around for some hours already, we visited Viinistu because the maps was showing it had a restaurant and we were all hungry.
It did have restaurant and it had really delicious food and the prices were fairly good as well for the quality. The girl who serviced us was a bit confused how to organize the courses and the bill she gave us was even more confused as her. She definitely has lot of confusion in her life. But everything worked out great and the bill also added up correctly regardless of not exactly containing what we ordered, so we carried on.
The sun was getting fairly low already, and the golden rays of the autumn sun were lighting the trees. Views were absolutely gorgeous, so we stopped here and there, to get some shots.
When you really want to get good picture of autumn leaves in the absolute perfect light, you should look places with some best place to stop is probably place where you have plenty of maples, oaks and other colourful leafy trees, so we made our first stop in a pine forest.
So after taking pictures of pines and sea, and rocks and all other non-autumn related things. I finally got two crappy pictures of the autumn leaves too. Here they are. Enjoy.
Then we spent couple of hours searching for an abandoned rocket base only to find the territory was taken over by a company called “Baltic Spoon”. You would imagine old rocket silos are best places for manufacturing spoons, but turns out they don’t actually make spoons but veneer instead.
But the light was gone, and we left the veneer manufacturing alone for the time being and headed home.
Now by the time I publish this article, the last leaves have fallen off and whole Estonia is covered with just gray melting snow muck. I installed indescribable amount of colourful leds in my studio, just so I wouldn’t forget what colour looks like.
As I am not only gonna take pictures of my studio, expect to get more depressing black and white photography from me in the future, unless of course I travel somewhere, which I totally will. Suggestions are welcome!
