Neuschwanstein Castle

The famous Neuschwanstein Castle as seen from the Marienbrucke

This picture was shot during a holiday in Austria in August of 2014. The castle is actually located in Germany, so we had to get from Austria to Germany, which in Europe, is no problem. I visited the castle once before when I was a child and it was quite impressive then… but seeing the castle again, it still impresses me.
The castle belonged to King Ludwig II and was finished in 1886. It served a role during the second world war, when art was inventorized there and gold was stored in the castle. It also served as the inspiration for the castle of Disney’s sleeping beauty. The funding of the castle ultimately lead to the suicide of Ludwig II, having walked into the nearby lake…

Setting this history of the castle aside, it is just a beautiful sight! After we stood at the entrance of the castle, we decided not to enter it due to the amount of tourists. Instead we walked on to this bridge to photograph it from there. And we were not the only ones! There was a large que of people to stand on the bridge to make a photo. We waited patiently and I took a spot in the middle of the bridge and started shooting. I was a bit rushed, because of all the other people on the bridge, but I took enough time to make this panorama shot. The panorama consists of three separate shots with my wide angle lens. I always try to not get any other persons on the photo, but in the upper right corner you can see that I failed in that 🙂
After making the shots we went down to the nearby lake and rowed to the middle of the lake, making the photo featured in this previous blog.

The shots were made with a ISO of 100 and setting the camera on aperture priority, I more or less got the right shots for the panorama. Back in 2014, I was not yet that experienced to put the camera in full manual, so this was at that moment the best option. I think now I would do that differently. When I got the shot, I took in the view for myself and then returned to the path were I came from to let other tourists make their shots.
In post the shots were stitched, I tweaked the highlights a little bit, making the clouds more vivid and I tweaked the colors just a little bit, making the greens and blues more apparent.
Feeling the “push” of the other tourists at the spot (I always feel a little bit rushed), I managed to get three very nice shots I think, making it an impulsive photo!

Camera settings:

Location