Legendary Hrad

Man, I really hate editing landscapes. The little by little perfectionist approach is always troublesome, so I end up spending way too much time on photos which were too flawed in the first place because of something like uneven lighting.
The only problem with my new X100S is the photos look so damn good on the screen! In fact, the screen is pretty much the only thing that's been giving me problems, I love the camera otherwise. But yeah, when the days are plagued with mediocre weather and therefore shooting conditions are that much trickier, seeing your photos come out nicely on the camera and then less nice on the laptop is always disappointing. Story of my life really. In that way, it's much more fun to just shoot photos and not worry about looking at them later! Considering that, it really doesn't surprise me when stories crop up of stashes of film rolls being found in old attics, undeveloped decades later but containing absolute gems of photography. I can understand certain photographers enjoying the process much more than the result. In fact, I've found my photography veering more and more towards that when in the past it was much more about the result. Anyway.

This was taken at the Spis Hrad, pretty much the flagship castle of Slovakia. And hell, the amount of castle ruins you see from the window of the car when driving around is large, plus they really add to the scenery. This one stood out for it's size and great perspective over the whole valley. As I said, the weather is incredibly foggy and cloudy though, so most of the view of the impressive High Tatras range we drove through yesterday was obscured.

What else, today was a very packed day...
We kicked off with very early breakfast at our roadside hotel before taking the road down through the Low Tatras to the Dobsincka Ice Cave. Now that was impressive! Once again, there was a big climb to the cavern entrance, before entering and having to descend into the system. This time however, it was to witness a massive cave with what can only be described as a glacier's worth of ice lodged in it. It's beautiful and much more expansive than the ice cave yesterday. Apparently it's quite unique for ice caves to form inside of mountains and remain for the entirety of summer. The rock deep in the caverns is smooth from the erosion but also cracked on a smaller scale from the frosting. Water drips down and creates long stalagmites reaching up to the ceiling. It's also incredibly cold and I couldn't feel my toes.

Anyway, after bursting back into the humid summer air, we hit the road again and travelled to the Slovak Paradise national park for a hike along some river gorges to a tall viewpoint. The forest here reminds me of Switzerland and it's quite ethereal with the fog. After some heavy climbing, we made it to a big rock outcrop overlooking the forested mountains. Hard not to imagine bears roaming around the place, that's how wild it looks. On the way back it started raining (finally, after endless taunting thunder) so the paths got muddy, which is never good when you've got a rental car... But it was a good hike, the type I'd been looking forward to doing and hadn't had the chance to properly do since Uganda.

And then we made our way to the Spis Hrad (pictured), stopping by an old church with an onion dome on the way. The villages here are getting more and more traditional, with your stereotypical colored wooden houses mixed in with the concrete post-communist blocks, and little old ladies dressed in slovak attire mixed in with the creeps who look like chavs making their way backwards along the evolution line. Overall though, it's a beautiful countryside and somehow the old chimney stacks from abandoned factories become part of the landscape. We ended the day at Levoca, an old fortified town which has remained stuck in time a bit. On a sidenote, loving the traditional dishes made with dumplings and sheep cheese.

peace