Hi all,
Whilst on my backpacking trip throughout Europe last year, I was lucky enough to visit one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen: Bled in Slovenia.
The photographs here are of Blejski Grad (Bled Castle), on an overcast morning in May. Shortly after taking these photographs, I went for a trek up to the side of the cliff face (almost slipped a few times on the moss covered rocks and stairs) and visited inside the castle. From the courtyard of the castle, is one of the most incredible views you will ever see. Unfortunately, the photographs that I took of the view didn't turn out so good as there was a lot of mist in the air and it was also raining.
A bit of history: the earliest mention of the castle in history books goes back to 1004 (this is one of the things I loved so much about Europe; the buildings date hundreds of years!) and is one of the oldest in Slovenia. The Romanesque tower is the oldest part of the building; during the Middle Ages some more towers were built and improvements were made to the fortifications. Later on, during the Baroque period, more buildings were erected. There's also a drawbridge over a moat.
There is a chapel up there as well (which I have also taken photographs of and posted
here), which was built in the 16th century and renovated during the 1700s; part of the renovations included frescoes, which you can see in my photograph.
Nowadays, the castle has been set up as a tourist exhibition, with a fair few displays. My favourites were of the primitive jewellery and of arrows used for hunting and weapons. Those remnants of ancient civilisation made me stop and stare out the window of the castle onto the magnificent lake below and just think how these people used to live.
All of these images were 5-image HDR compositions.
The images have suffered, somewhat, from JPG compression for the forum.
Comments and critique welcome.
Regards,
Humayun
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