Blue Essence of Carpathians

I was walking down the hill in Carpathian mountains, disappointed. There was a promising amount of mist all the way up few hours ago, which unfortunately turned to lie higher than expected and I had made no single exposure from the viewpoint on Vysoka hill. The sunrise had not helped so I decided to leave the spot shotless and get back to the car. On the way, I was trying to look around in search for a cleaner piece of ground in the woodland to try to photograph misty young beech forest. With not much luck as I found everything too dirty for was I had in mind. I could have removed some of the mess off my composition but there were way too many relics of trees all over while sceneries did not seem to justify an extra effort. Soon I gave up searching and took an easy fix - decided to exclude the ground from the frame. I used a longer lens attempting to create a rhythm with lines of tree trunks, and in hopes for some interesting interpretation of mist by unfiltered Velvia.

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Unspoiled Nature of Poloniny

The photograph for this week was created about a year ago when we were shooting our book 15 Treasures of Slovakia (you can browse through it online here: http://www.lightharmony.com/treasures). Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians were added on the UNESCO World Natural Heritages list on long ago, in 2007. You can find them in the very eastern part of Slovakia, on the border with Ukraine and Poland. Some of them are part of the youngest and least known national park called Poloniny. The forests are absolutely unique for being preserved in their original conditions and untouched for several thousand years. Not too many people know that they contain the world's tallest beech trees.

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