Austria and Germany ~ October, 2006 ~ Lee Carroll's personal travel photos

Photos by Lee Carroll

Here you are seeing Austria and Germany (Bavaria) in mid October 2006. I was lucky, since this time of year normally has rain, and more rain. But instead, it was sunny.... way sunny... a searing, blinding low sun. In the north of Europe in October, the sun comes up late and goes down early. Almost all the sunlight has that "golden cast" and the long shadows that photographers love and usually only find for a few hours a day. In this case, Lee had it most of the time! Also in October in Bavaria, the mist begins to appear and cover the mountains and lakes in unusual ways.... all this makes for good photographs. Some of the photos you can enlarge for detail (and just for fun). Any photo with a strong thick border may be enlarged. Just click on the photo to open it into a much larger and more detailed one. Have Fun! A fast Internet connection will help. This page is very long...

From Lee: Weather and October light make ordinary things look spectacular. Add extraordinary scenery and you have the best of both worlds. These shots are all in Southern Germany (Bavaria). The above village was photographed through the windshield of a fast moving car driven by my German language publisher Konrad Halbig. We were on our way to his house in the country near Munich. The skies were amazing! Yep... that's an authentic May Pole on the right.

From Lee: This magic location is in Bavaria. At the bottom right is a family photo being taken (photographer not shown). But click to enlarge it and take a look at the kid's reaction in the front. He is yelling "take the sun away!" It's very, very bright... at eye level! It's sometimes tough to take good photos in this kind of light without a neutral density filter or polarization filter... one that knocks the highlights back a couple of stops to preserve the color and detail. And taking photos of people? Forget it! Squint City.

From Lee: The left isn't that artsy, but it's such typical Bavarian architecture and decoration... so colorful and everywhere! The photo at the right is one of the ferries of tourists. The sun was directly on it, and nothing else, creating a very surreal setting.

TOP: I don't normally do many verticals unless the subject matter demands it, and these did. The shot at the left is a classic, and the sun couldn't have cooperated more. The sailboat at the left was shot from a moving ferry. The lake was filled with great shots of small boats (see below). BELOW: Take a look at the detail of the enlargements below. It shows the quality of today's longer lenses with vibration reduction technology. (200mm). Don't you love the look of the old wooden motorboats?

From Lee: (above) Outside of Salzburg, Austria, are many small villages, and this time of year they were harvesting the grass for feed. I call this photo of the guy with his tractor, "Primary Colors." ... and yes, the grass really is this green. It was especially striking for a guy from Southern California, where nothing much is green, and cows are something we see in books. Everything was amazingly colorful. The right-hand photo is a village outside of Munich where I stayed.

From Lee: Directly above is the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau, outside of Munich. The Germans have preserved this openly as a symbol for all to see of what can go wrong in a government if the people allow it. Many of their young people are required to see it, and to study the issues. The right-hand photo is a profound sculpture within the former torture rooms.

From Lee: This above church in Black and White reminds some of an infrared photo, but it isn't. The light is so strong that it lends itself to that interpretation. The right-hand photo represents acres of forest that is a green that is hard to describe. This photo was not color enhanced, and came out of the camera this way!