Traveling to Lake Bled was part of a huge Landscape Photography Road trip in the summer of 2019. The journey started from Rome, Italy, and the plan was to visit Tuscany- Dolomites-Slovenia-Austria-Germany-Dolomites and back home. And so we started exploring Tuscany for the first time and then drove into the Dolomites East side near Cortina, a well-known location to us, and the time came to cross the border to Slovenia. Coming near the borders, we realized, from an app notification, that we needed a vignette sticker on our rental that I didn’t know what the hell that was and where to get it! After a quick search, we got one just before the border, and off we go to Lake Bled. The plan was to shoot the sunset and the sunrise the next morning and then leave for Austria. So we arrived at our hotel with heavy rain in mid-August. We checked in and rested until the rain calmed. During sunset, we shoot some photos but not much until the rain started again! We had lunch and then back to our hotel, hoping for a better view for sunrise. We woke up early, and the weather was incredible. Almost clear sky and light fog! Perfect, we said let’s go! In the car, everything was fogged out, and we couldn’t see a thing, clear the front window, and off we go in a rush to halt a second later... we hit the car next to us on the bumper on the way out of the narrow parking spot! We had full insurance, thankfully, so we lost a few minutes because we didn’t know what to do. The rental was from a different country, the car we hit was also from another country, and all the papers in the vehicle were in Italian. We couldn’t read it, and it was 5 am so everyone was sleeping to ask for assistance. We quickly decided that we would not miss the fantastic sunrise and drove down to the lake. I quickly took some long exposures and then set up a time-lapse on the DSLR, and it was time for aerials. More on the shots in the next part.
The story of the day kept going! Went back to the hotel and asked the receptionist about the other car. It was owned by a Belgian couple that was hiking the mountains for a week and was out of cell reception, so we couldn’t notify them, and we had to leave! We left all our detail, signed some papers, and off we went to the next stop that was Austria, and that is another story.
The experience at Lake Bled during a foggy sunrise is simply mind-blowing. I was so immersed in the landscape that the fact that we had a minor car accident 15min before was out of my mind as if it didn't happen. That view! What a view! I took some shots firstly, and it was time for some video because the sun started to rise, and it would dissolve the fog fast! I wanted to make a revealing shot of the island in the middle of the lake, and the only way to do it differently was to reveal it from shadow to light. Turned the drone to face the sun to get a dark exposure and took a counterclockwise route to eventually have the sun behind me and a view of the island illuminated by the morning glow!
The plan was for one day in Slovenia. If we didn't lose time after the sunrise with sorting out the car accident, we would have visited another lake nearby and an amazing canyon a bit further and then leave for Austria, but that remains for the next visit to Slovenia that has much more to offer. If we had more time, we would hike up the hill, and I would shoot from up there for a much different perspective. I would also take a walk around the lake, and I would have arranged a boat ride during sunrise for some fantastic captures and an experience like no other! We will do it next time tho!
The challenge was to set the exposure correctly to get the transition from shadow to light. Edit was a straightforward procedure. The shot was in Dlog, so I applied a simple lut and adjusted a few basic settings, cropped to 9:16, and centered the frame nothing more.
The lesson, heh, be more careful with my surroundings when waking up for a sunrise shoot, and I'm too excited about it! On the other hand, now I know what to do if I ever have a minor accident again on a rental!