VINTGAR GORGE by Beno Saradzic

VINTGAR GORGE by Beno Saradzic

Click here to follow me on Facebook and here to follow my Instagram account. The Vintgar gorge is one of the most popular natural features in Slovenia. From Bled the route leads north towards the village of Podhom. All along the road there are clear signs for Vintgar, and then by local roads the route leads to the entrance to the gorge itself (3.5 km from Bled). The gorge has been arranged for visitors for more than a hundred years. Along the narrow passage, where the Radovna river thrashes loudly against its rocky confines, there are paths, galleries and bridges constructed in the rock. The trail runs through the 1600 m long gorge. The Radovna flows over cascades and rapids, and in clear pools it finds peace for a few moments. The Vintgar gorge ends at the delightful Šum waterfall, the highest river fall in Slovenia. At the waterfall the trail leaves the Radovna and rises up a track heading south-east to the chapel of St Catherine above Zasip. From here there is one of the finest views over the entire area of Bled. The way back goes down to Zasip and then along the road to Bled. The path through Vintgar gorge leads along the wooden bridges, galleries and rushing river Radovna through the picturesque gorge, which measure 1600m and ends with 26-metre waterfall Šum. One can find its way back pass St. Catherine’s church and take a scenic walk across the meadows which offer marveouls views on Karavanke mountain range, the Ljubljanska valley, Bleda and its surroundings and Mt. Triglav. How I took this shot: my first instinct was to take the picture on top of the bridge but I stopped myself before pressing on the shutter button. I realized that the same picture was probably taken a thousand times already. So I found myself climbing on a very slippery and steep hillside until I found myself at the edge of the abyss, right below the bridge. My friend Anze Vishnar helped me with the gear which would most certainly be flying into the water along with me if I had to do this on my own. I adjusted my Gitzo tripod into the lowest possible position so that my camera could find itself at level of the flowers in the foreground. I chose Canon TS-E 24mm lens for this composition. It was wide enough to capture the wooden bridge above me while giving me enough detail on each side and bottom of the frame. I waited for the tourists to clear out before snapping 5 bracketed exposures. This was needed because I knew that shadow and highlight detail could never be recovered from a single exposure. The bottom of the bridge appear almost black and the rocks at the far were totally white.
I used luminosity masking and layer blending to process this image. HDR tonemapping didn’t work because each bracketed frame contained too much movement so the ‘ghosting’ became an issue.
Final look was achieved with NIK Color Efex Pro. I used Wacom Intuos Pro tablet on a custom built PC workstation powered by Win 10 64-bit.

Beno Saradzic: Photos