Bled

My second stop in Slovenia was Lake Bled, a popular tourist hotspot that I'd been looking forward to seeing for quite some time. All of the photographs I'd seen of it looked sun-drenched and idyllic. When I got there, it was definitely drenched, but not with sun!

I parked the bike up and hiked to the top of Mala Osojnica, a hill nearby, with excellent views out over the lake below, including the iconic little island. The path was incredibly muddy and very slippery, so it was a tough scramble, but worth the effort.

My pictures don't really do it justice; the lighting was flat and bleak, and with only a single wide-angle lens, there wasn't a lot of magic to capture. That said, the tower on the island belongs to a church, and I could hear the bells ringing over the water as I made my ascent, which was quite haunting.

These photographs were taken with my Canon EOS 5D Mark IV and the extraordinary Canon 35 mm f/1.4 L II USM .