Our 2 week “explore Bavaria” holiday starts with a walk through the countryside on the edge of the Bavarian Alps, including a visit to the towns of Murnau and Oberammergau. Join me for the first post of many in my new series: “Bavaria on 35mm film”.
The first in a series of “explore Bavaria” posts, this idea for a new series came about as we decided to stay local for a much needed summer holiday. With so many amazing landscapes within 1-2 hours of Munich, it was time to venture out and enjoy some of the best Bavaria has to offer. I also did not do much usual over planning and for once I had no plan at all, our approach was simple: make use of the ‘Bayern ticket’ (unlimited public transport travel in all of Bavaria for one day for €25, +€8 for every additional passenger) and go explore by foot. Armed with two 35mm cameras, a backpack, and some decent hiking shoes we set off for a 2 week holiday around Bavaria. In fact we did come back home once or twice, so it was nice to break up the trip and spend 3/4 days at a time away.
A bit more about the gear
I have been known to go to the top of mountains with my large format gear, but this time I slimmed right down and ended up with two 35mm cameras. My designated colour film camera was my weather/explosion/anything proof Nikonos, with my pocket size Olympus XA2 being used as my black & white camera. I picked up some great value expired Kodakcolor 400 plus film (6 rolls in total) as I was hoping for that old style holiday look in these shots.
Mandatory travel photos. I am surprised by how well this film performed in strong lighting, the colours are really bright; less so for indoor/high contrast shots. Can’t complain with 20+ year old expired film though!
I love how these images came out. Granted the exposure is off and so is the colour for that matter, but there is just something about a big sky that I really enjoy.
Murnau (population 12,000), also known as ‘Murnau am Staffelsee’ has a really nice high street and castle. It is at the foothills of the Bavarian Alps.
I really like the colours in this shot, and if you look closely you will see my reflection!
Nice town, nice beer, what else does one need?
I really like the colours in these shots, the expired film looks quite old school, which was my hope in using these rolls.
We visited a really great brewery, couldn’t resist taking a photo!
Oberammergau (population 5,000) about 40mins south of Murnau by train. We stayed here overnight.
There are some really picturesque, movie like scenes in this little town.
Really cool vintage car outside the hotel!
Overall observations
A really enjoyable first day out in southern Bavaria. The weather was quite changeable, but importantly not too hot to walk in (I think we ended up doing about 10k walk between towns at the beginning). I am quite pleased with how some of the shots came out, considering I was using film that was about 20 years old. I quite like the ‘risk’ in using expired film, especially for this type of holiday snapshots. I am always surprised how well the colours do work when the shot is well exposed, and if everything fails and you end up with an unusual/totally unplanned shot, you can easily say “well, that is some nice expired film ‘art’”. Win-win all round I guess.
I have about 6-8 more posts coming in short order, so see you very soon!
Thanks for stopping by,
Neil
