Vitaly comes from Kremenets in the Ternopil region. We are both amateur nature photographers and colleagues. He's is more into bird photography and my favourites are macro and plants. To get into macro photography you need some extra stuff to carry around. We are used to tease eachother about camera brands. one can't compare a modern plastic Canon super ultra fast set with a complete solid light metal Olympus set (for the camera freaks !) I am the Olympus owner of course.
The camera stuff I took with me contained 2 cameras, several lenses (21mm/2.0, 28mm/2.0, 50mm/3.5macro, 135mm/2.8, 500mm/8mirror, autotubus with 80mm/4 and 135mm/4.5), F280 flash and Novoflex macro flashset including some spare batteries. A Manfrotto monopod and a Manfrotto minitripod joined the camera stuff. 15 Fuji provia F slidefilms was enough to cover the 3 weeks trip for pictures. In Ternopil I bought a Zorki2c which was after a dust cleaning ready for some action. At the end of the trip I found a "Start"
in Lviv which will be tested soon for the quality. I used the Zorki 2c in Ukraine already and pictures you can find here soon too. I scan my pictures with a Nikon LS1000 slidescanner or Epson flatbed scanner "perfection 1640SU" and created a picture scenery for each subject.1. Cities + Buildings 2. Birds 3. Plants 4. Spiders & Insects
Kremenets is a city with population of approx. 20.000 people. It is a small town which had a unirversity until 1964, when they centralised the university in Ternopil. In 1806 Dionius Mikler (Irish botanist) grounded the Botanical garden of Kremenets (100 Ha). The austrian botanist Willibald Besser joined in 1808 and in 1823 they had over 12.000 species. In 1832 they closed the lyceum and Besser became director of the botanical garden of Kiev, with him the biggest part of the collection. Willibald Besser is well known as botanist and discovered many species in central europe (like species ending on besserianum, besserianus or instead of L. (from Linneaus) Besser behind the species name). They now try to re-establish the Botanical garden according to drawings and original plans from the 18th century. They are searching for investors and cooperation with other botanical gardens especially in europe.
The area has many different biotopes and therefore also many species. locked between the Carpatian mountains and the Oeral Mountains it's a huge swampy and forest area with groups of hills up to 400 or 500 meter above sealevel. Kremenets is situated on the northside of one of this hilly areas mainly build from limestone. Several species are unique for this area only.
Lviv (Pop. approx. 1 million) and Ternopil (Pop. approx. 200.000) are real cities with many old buildings and to my opinion more developed yet.I found some information links on the internet from western Ukraine like :
A place to visit is Pochajev, a little village with a huge monastry. This monastry is the second lagest of the country, based on the top of a hill it gives a great view if the weather is fine. More information about Saint Job of pochaev is nicely organised on this site from the Orthodox church.
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