The Quest of the Unholy Mountain

I think I wrote not too long ago that Winter is a great time to shoot low light landscapes and such because the sun rises late and sets early.  Well, that's all well and good if the weather is agreeable.

Somehow I don't think the specs are necessary here.

Believe it or not you're looking at a big arena that can seat several thousand people.  Last Sunday we headed to Heidelberg, not to see the world's largest wine barrel, visit the castle ruins, or walk through the shopping district.  We intended to climb the "Holy Mountain" (Heilingenberg) and photograph some rather curious sights.  Instead, we climbed Heilingenberg, into a snowy fog, got lost a couple times (once again due to a lack of proper signage) and saw just a shadow of what we intended to see.  The first place was the above arena.  Truth be told, I was hoping there'd be snow or fog, but this was a little more than I was thinking.  This arena has a sinister past, and some gloomy atmospherics would fit it nicely.  It was built in 1935.  That date is probably a clue to who had it built.

Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's minister of propaganda, came up with the idea of building 1,000 of these arenas for the purpose of holding Nazi propaganda plays, presentations, and films.  These arenas were called Thingstatte or Thingplatz, in a typical Nazi attempt to tie into a fanciful Germanic past.  "Things" were actually Medieval Norse (Scandinavian) and Germanic gatherings of free men held to settle clan issues and make group decisions.  They are a very rudimentary basis for today's parliaments.  As usual, the Nazis perverted German culture heritage, in this case twisting a gathering of free people with equal voices into a tool for cultural brainwashing.  The movement wasn't a priority for Hitler, so the Thingstatte above Heidelberg turned out to be one of only 45 that were actually constructed.  This one housed 20,000 participants on its opening day, when Goebbels himself oversaw the ceremony.  After the war, the arena was abandoned for the most part.  Today it is sometimes used for concerts and open air movies.  But, mostly it sits as an empty and moss draped curiosity.  It is a popular spot to explore on Sundays, even if it is covered in ice and shrouded in a thick fog.

Fujifilm X-E2 ISO 1600 30mm f/4 1/250  

Fujifilm X-E2 ISO 1600 18mm f/11 1/60

The other site I was hoping to photograph were the ruins of the church of the Michaelkloster, a 11th century monastery.  The church incorporates the ruins of a Roman temple to Mercury.  The mountain is covered in archaeological sites; this is one of most important.  But...

iPhone 5s

Well, we climbed the Holy Mountain as fast as possible despite the lack of signs in the super thick mist and finally arrived at St. Michael's Cloister to find an actual useful sign which conveyed a great deal of information (don't sell things here, don't set things on fire, don't come in when the gate is shut, respect the premises, the authorities will track you down if you do any of this stuff...).  However, what it did not say was that it won't be open even when the sign says it should be.  While tourists can haul themselves up here through snow, ice, and fog, the person responsible for making sure people don't sell stuff or light stuff on fire couldn't be bothered.

Thankfully, the hut at the top of the mountain was open so we could grab a drink and thaw out.  That was that.  No pictures of ruins, just pictures of mist over a barely recognizable, uh, thing.  Ok, Winter, you're tough.

We did grab this shot of the Alte Brucke on our way to dinner.

Fujifilm X-E2 ISO 200 46mm f/10 15secs, soft focus filter

 Somehow over the course of all this I managed to tweak the index and middle finger of my right hand.  Being a righty, this causes me a bit of a problem in just about everything, but most definitely for holding or operating a camera.  So, I'm out of commission until things heal up.  Perhaps I'll do a little indoor work this week.  Perhaps.

Misadventures at Hohenzollern Castle

Last weekend's plans fell through so we decided to take advantage of our stolen time by taking a rather industrious day trip into Baden-Württemberg to check out the famous Hohenzollern Castle.  A six hour drive there and back didn't seem so terrible.  Heck, we used to make that drive down to Columbus and back when we lived in Akron just to have dinner (at a German family restaurant, oddly enough).  Anyway, it all sounded perfectly reasonable.

So, we left early in the morning of Sunday and headed down to the castle.  The drive went along smoothly, albeit insanely dull.  One highpoint was getting stuck in a small town that was holding a parade for people dressed as witches.  Whether that was some sort of traditional Carnival activity or not was never determined.  After escaping the witches we arrived in the village below the castle (this is starting to sound like a work of the Grimm brothers).  The plan was to go to the park on a hill opposite the castle to take some pictures than head to the castle for a tour.  Well, when we arrived this was the view.

Fujifilm X-E2 ISO 800 55m f/10 1/500

Not exactly what I was hoping for.  Additionally, as you can see, it had snowed quite a bit.  While making the surroundings extremely beautiful, it made finding a trail to the park impossible.  Ah, if only there were things you could hang up on trees or posts that could indicate to visitors the proper direction for such attractions.  I believe they're known as signs in my neck of the woods.  Eh hem.  Anyway, even if we had found a sign that indicated the correct direction of the viewpoint to the castle, the low laying clouds completely enveloped the castle and the hill where this park supposedly existed.  So, after taking a few shots in the forest we decided to head over to the castle for the tour and hope for better weather afterwards.  

Fujifilm X-E2 ISO 800 55mm f/13 1/500

Hohenzollern Castle is considered one of the most beautiful castles in Germany.  It is.  However, besides its aesthetic qualities, the castle itself isn't a very interesting attraction.  The castle was built by the Hohenzollern family in the mid-1800's to replace a ruin from the mid-1400's.  At this point the Hohenzollerns were an important dynastic family in Germany.  Kings of Prussia and the emperors of the short-lived German Empire (1871-1918) were members.  The castle was basically built as showpiece for the family, much like the better known Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria.  No one lived in Hohenzollern Castle, so anyone hoping for a peep into the lifestyle of the German emperors will be disappointed.  Basically, it is a shrine to the glory days of a family long past its time of influence or importance.  The tour, thankfully inexpensive, takes the visitor through a handful of dusty, unheated rooms that apparently never really served much of a purpose when they were constructed.  Non-German speakers are given a book in their language to read on the tour, an activity, quite frankly, which could be attempted more comfortably in the visitor center.  Perhaps audioguides along with signage will some day catch on in the future.  If the grounds are wet, the visitor is obligated to wear giant slippers over their shoes making the somewhat dull tour more interesting with the prospect of oneself or someone else tripping on the uneven floors and crashing into a "priceless" yet tarnished decorative item.  The tour concludes in the treasury where you can see the crown of Wilhelm II, among other things.  However, like the castle itself, the crown was never used either.  So, the visitor (unless they are fans of the Hohenzollern dynasty) walks away feeling like they just visited a roadside attraction which cost an ridiculous amount of money to construct so some folks could play act at being fairytale royalty.  

But, that doesn't mean it isn't a remarkable photographic subject.  While regretting the time and money spent on the tour, the view from the castle of the surrounding countryside was worth taking the paid bus ride to the top of Hohenzollern Berg.

We never made it back to the hill overlooking the castle.  The sun was already heading down by the time the tour had ended and we climbed back down the hill to the car.  So, I never got the shot I had dragged us three hours down the autobahn to take .  One of the lessons I'm learning during this experimentation with landscape photography is how important proper planning is.  Don't try to fit too much.  But, most importantly you can't account for the weather.  As it worked out, I ended up taking the last shot of the trip from the side of the road below the castle.  The light of the ending day ended up being pale and subtle as the heavy cloud cover cleared away.  While nothing really ended up being the way we hoped and some plans went awry, this unexpected view ended up being quite satisfactory.

Canon 600D ISO 100 19mm f/9 40secs, 10 stop ND filter, two exposure blend with Photoshop

The rest of the photos from our Hohenzollern misadventures can be viewed on Flickr and some will be up on Instagram and for sale Twenty20 as well.