After a few years, I finally got back to Czech-Saxon Switzerland this weekend. We’ve met with a great bunch of people there and together had an absolute blast photographing this amazing national park. Our base of operations for the weekend was guesthouse Bamako in Chřibská village. On Saturday morning, we headed towards Křížový vrch, which offers great views towards the landscape. Once we got there, we realized winter is almost here, and started wishing we had taken a thermos with coffee. The light haze and sun bursting through the clouds made for an amazing atmospehere though, so when the show started, we quickly forgot about the cold and happilly snapped away 🙂 When the sun got too high and shadows got harsh, we left for the guesthouse and finally enjoyed a cup of hot coffee and a nice breakfast.

Czech Switzerland Gallery

Since the weather wasn’t really promising for the day (clear sky and harsh light), we decided to go to a valley near Jetřichovice village, to the confluence of Bělá and Kamenice, where the ruin of a 500 year old mill still stands. We photographed the mill, reflections in the water, and even got to photograph further down the valley along the river, where there were quite a lot of nice views. We spent several hours here and when it started getting late, we headed for a walk towards Vilemínina Skála, where we wanted to photograph the sunset. We got there right on time – the sun was setting in a bit of haze, the sky lit up with colorful clouds, the atmospeher was amazing. Those are the moments I love when photoographing. Looking at this amazing view, occasionally clicking the shutter, and just taking in the atmospehere and energy… When the last bit of color faded from the clouds, we quickly headed back to the near village, since going down from the rocks in complete darkness would not be fun!

We woke up early the next day to drive to our sunrise location – a well known rock formation in the Saxon Switzerland called Bastei. This place is well known due to its rocky bridges and ruins of an old castle. It also offers amazing views to the landscape below. We just didn’t realize how famous it actually is until we saw the parking lot close by. It looked like your average shopping centre car park! Tens of photographers were already waiting all around the place, so finding a good spot was a quite a challenge. Not only that, the place also proved the theory that I should not really be photographing in this corner of Czech Republic. I’ve lost another polarizer with Lee adaptor attached :/ Once again it turned out though that off the beaten path is the best place to be and when the sun finally came up and starting lighting the mist underneath us, we had the best places to capture that view. After a nice morning spent there, we went back to the guesthouse for a great breakfast, had a short photoshop course and finally headed home in the afternoon.

The whole weekend was amazing and not only thanks to the perfect weather and great landscapes, but also thanks to the great bunch of people that were there with me. I’m already looking forward to the next time I’m there, because even despite the constant losses of photo equipment, this place always has something to offer. As always, you will find a couple photos from this weekend in the Czech Switzerland gallery.