entrance door, kirchberg castle

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the castle of the bad reichenhall district 'kirchberg', in the vernacular dialect lovingly called 'schlössl', is the cradle of the spa activities of my hometown. dating back to 1130, it originally served as an estate. changing owners led to various utilisations, and in 1723 it got rebuilt in the now visible baroque form.

in the recent past it served as an upper class restaurant for a while and now is in private property. not the most prudent caretaking for such a historical building, as you can easily see from the lock in the door, which was inserted without only the minimum care for a historic place

but the painting and the forms still are widely intact, and the weatheredness of the color makes up for interesting details. sometimes it is really rewarding to explore the photographic possibilities nearby, especially regarding the lighting situation. here i didn't have to take it at first chance but could come back when the light was a suitable, cloud dampened backlight.

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st. pankraz castle and church

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late afternoon light had already left st. pankraz church in the shade. due to the cold air and light wind there were almost no distortions by the heatings from the houses of bad reichenhall under this scenery, only the object contrast turned out to be really low - a bit more then 3 f-stops is really not much. i had exposed to the right, so i hoped there was enough differentiation in there for a detail-rich image. playing with lightzone allowed to increase the local contrast and with the result i am quite happy.

just one thing keeps nagging me: even from the tripod all my shots are tilted to right - it seems almost impossible for me to adjust the camera horizontally. so the next thing to get is a rrs lever clamp with a spirit level. not that i would not like to tilt some shots on purpose, but never getting it level even if i want to is more than annoying.

oh yes, st. pankraz was already the subject of this post. it seems to attract me especially during winter time.

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the old castle

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at the moment those late afternoon hours seem to be really rewarding for me. i had tried to portray gruttenstein castle, only 10 min away from our house, on quite some occasions, but all i got were mere reproductions. today's image is different: the old trees (another found-again partiality) do not reveal much of the castle, but create a mood maybe a bit out of a fairy tale. that's what i enjoy in here, and it still is quite 'straight' photography, not much massaging the raw file.

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castle from a fairy tale

taken with a polarizer filter in front of my 17-35mm, I tried to intensify the mirrored picture, but had to learn that my theory was flawed because of the unpolarized nature of the sunlight. Anyhow, the picture came out as I wanted it, so at least the polarizer did no harm.

labour day morning was cold, but taking this picture was definitely worth getting up and out at 6:00 am.

this photo on flickr.

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