There is a really cool Yakutsk-based guy, Peter Andreev, who is mostly known as Kallamish. In the city blogosphere he is considered to be a popular author. No wonder. He is a talanted creative designer, artist, photographer, and pretty active traveller. Everything he does he posts on his blog at http://dnevniki.ykt.ru/kallamish.

Once Peter stumbled upon Rober Harison’s The Icarus Project. He was impressed by its idea, i.e. to send a camera attached to a helium weather balloon high into the stratosphere to take pictures of the Earth from near space. Since that moment he started thinking… in the way of ‘Why not?’..

Why not do the same in Yakutsk? Send a camera with helium balloons to the sky and take unique photographs of the world’s coldest city as seen from above? At the first glance, everything seemed simple. He needed a camera and balloons. He had a digital camera, pretty simple, cheap one. If fallen and broken, it would not cause any tears, indeed. The problem was where to get 450 helium balloons at the cost of 50 rubles / ~2 USD each. The total cost is 750 USD, but the idea was still good.

He scratched his head… and… and… called his friends. The Prazdnik entertainment company liked his intention and provided him with one big ballon (1 metre in diameter).

On July 28th, 2010, Peter attached his camera to the balloon and let it fly as high as possible. Take a look at what he came out with.

Like Peter’s photos? So, please, let the world know about them. Would love to see the winter photographs of Yakutsk as seen from the sky. By the way, snow comes soon, just in two months. Keep tuned.