After France, I traveled to Poland to meet up with my parents and brother. Being of Polish decent, it was the perfect time to visit my father’s birthplace. I landed in Poland without any incident and walked out to be greeted by my father and uncle. We traveled back to the hotel where I dropped of my luggage and headed out with the family to visit the old city. It became apparent that I wouldn’t have much time to really take pictures. This trip was about hanging with my family and seeing some general sights.
Warsaw:
Warsaw was a really nice city. We traveled to Old Town where we walked the streets and looked around. I only had an hour before diner, so I took a few street shots with nothing really turning out. Street shooting really is something I am not good at, nor is of any real interest to me. It was not a particularly great time to be there anyway and would have been nice to get back there at night.
Sanok:
The next day we traveled by car to the southern town where my father grew up. If you have ever driven in Poland, I really don’t need to write more, but they seem to have only invented highways a few months before we got there. The drive was long and slow, but it was nice to see the area.
The landscape in Poland is fairly flat and rural. Once we got closer to Sanok, it started to get a little more hilly. I took a few pictures here and there, but again was pretty confined to my travels. I did get this shot of dinner:
We traveled around a little the next day, but we had to leave early to brave the roads over to Krakow.
Krakow:
Krakow was stunning. It was the only major city that survived the war, so it still had that history to it. My brother and I set out to the castle to take a look. I took a few images, but being a national monument it was pretty busy. This was another location I would have liked to return to during the evening. If we had spent a good week in the city, I would have been able to take some pretty good shots. There were so many possible locations.
We finished our simple tour and headed to the hotel to change and then go out for dinner. I brought along my Gorilla Pod so that I didn’t have to carry anything big. We had dinner and went back to the square just as the sun was setting. I was able to snap a good picture of the square by mounting my camera to the Gorilla Pod and placing it on the ground.
After a simple desert at an outside cafe, we walked back through the square. I mounted the camera again to take a few other shots. It was really hard to get the framing I wanted with the camera being so low to the ground. I was unwilling to drop down to take the picture as I really wasn’t dressed for it. I did get this great black & white shot by placing it on a garbage can.
I went back to the hotel early and woke up the next day to head back to Warsaw so we could fly out early the next morning. All in all, the Poland part of the trip resulted in more of the touristy snapshots than France. That was what I expected, and had a great time while I was there. I must say however I was exhausted after France and it would have been nice to have come here separately.
A Few Comments from the Shoot:
- The trip was too short to really spend time shooting
- You should leave time at the end of a trip to rest. I had no energy to get out.
- The GorillaPod is fantastic, but finding something to wrap it around was hard.
The Map: