Celebrating the Christmas Lights in Republic Square, Yerevan

For the past few weeks now, Yerevan's Republic Square has been slowly adding some festive editions to the area, it first started with a few lights being put up across the buildings, people on cranes were often seen setting up lights and preparing the initial frames for bigger additions. After a while, a tree began to appear in the very centre of this area, starting from the top, it began to take form with each day. It felt a little like this was all taking quite a while, I would joke that it would be similar service to that of my potentially lost gimbal supposedly somewhere in the postal system. Armenian life is slow, and it feels as if this spans even into the celebration of Christmas, taking place in January as is the tradition in this part of the world, rather than the west's 24th and 25th of December. It was only last night, on the 19th of December, that Yerevan's main Christmas event was to take place: the turning on of the lights for the Christmas tree.

This was met with a huge gathering, the largest density I have seen while here in Armenia. A stage was being prepared for an orchestral event, and television crews had huge trucks riddled with receivers and camera setups, people standing around and getting ready to start capturing the live event that'd be broadcast around the nation. The atmosphere here was still slow, people stood patiently, clinging to their warm cups of either coffee, tea, or hot chocolate. In our case, it was hot chocolate that we had hoped would maintain our warmth in the cold.

Huge lighting setups would punch through the mixture of cold air and vehicle fumes. Beams of colour shooting up through the sky, sometimes moving around in unique patterns, pushing upward in unison sometimes to meet at the top of the tree, where the star would sit, waiting to briefly be lit in all its glory. You could see the movements in the air through the light, I had to capture it, being a huge fan of light beams (forgive me, there is a film term for this that I seem to have completely forgotten as I type this).

It took a few attempts, changes in the camera settings, but I finally got there in the end. A few shots focused around the light, while much of my attention remained on staying warm and waiting for the main event, as camera crews and production staff ran around setting up barriers and capturing snippets of b-roll.

Huge screens were sitting either side of the orchestra seating area, throwing out festive messaging and imagery. There wasn't much else going on with them at that time, as we waited for everything else. Yet the crowd continued to grow, some wearing festive clothing, others wearing as many layers as possible to stay warm in as the temperature continued to drop going into the later hours of the evening. Around this time we were both really starting to feel the cold ourselves, still gripping to our rapidly depleting cups of hot chocolate. Now starting to question whether we were too early and the worthiness of sticking around. But we did for a little while longer.

I continued to shoot images of the event with my camera, using the Sony A6000 with a 35mm F1.8 lens. Sometimes this camera and lens can struggle in low light, but it actually performed very well here. Managing to pick up the light beams, not being too poor on dynamic range. Yet I still couldn't help but notice that this main event area was missing a few things: primarily food and drink areas. The rest of the city is throwing out Christmas markets, and a short walk away from the area is Northern Avenue, the city's most popular street. A few stalls here and there for such items, but void within the main area.

It did seem like a bit of a missed opportunity for the city, and certainly would have given everyone waiting a few more things to do and enjoy rather than just standing idle, observing the light displays and listening to the music.

This picture sums up the main event area, you can see that the density of people is quite high, though there isn't much else to do or see. This area sits in front of a huge building that is a museum, which also didn't seem to have much connection to what was going on. The area was still decorated beautifully, however. And the main event was riddled with live music and a grand display of fireworks not long later. I suspect this won't be the end of it though, with all the time and effort that went into building it all, there's likely to be more events and maybe more things to do around the area as Christmas continues to creep up.

One thing I'm particularly interested in is the ice skating, checking that out and hopefully not breaking any bones in the process!

Yerevan is full of beautiful lighting, and sometimes it's hard to tell what's a Christmas decoration and what's just part of the beauty of the city. I've quite liked this, seeing the warm glow of streetlights all over, festive looking trees towering over the sides of the city's busy main roads. A lot of lighting sits around these locations, adding to the beautiful colour and atmosphere that is found during simple walks throughout. Sometimes the slightest addition might even be throwing a Santa hat on top of a logo, or a balcony with a toy Santa hanging from it as if he's clinging on in attempt to get into the apartment to spread some gifts around. A nice mix of humour and atmosphere.

For me, this is the first Christmas away from home. And it oddly doesn't feel like I am away from home. This whole time in Armenia, it has felt like a second home I have always had. I can't recommend visiting this place enough.

And to end the post: here is that picture of the tree, still not fully lit up, but the closest image I could get of it. That star at the top glowing over the city, of which its light could be seen a few streets over. I'll be trying to capture it in different ways while it remains, and hopefully with a few stills on 35mm film. A shame my gimbal wasn't here to help me document this event on video, but hey, the fun is being here in the first place.