Kaluga, before the storm

July 16, 2005.

One of my favorite photos of the past two years, mainly because of the circumstances surrounding it. We were spending the weekend at a friend's so-called dacha (actually a house on the outskirts of a medium-sized city, so not the classic rural dacha one imagines) in Kaluga and went to one of the local lakes to celebrate someone's birthday. Not five minutes after this photo was taken, we were all huddling in a car (and unluckier members of our party were huddling underneath a rubber raft and some towels outside) for shelter from a huge thunderstorm.