Every time when I am driving near the town of Oravsky Podzamok, I simply must get off the highway and stop there for a moment to take some photos of this castle as it stands on its rocky cliff as an imposing landmark jutting out against the sky. And therefore today, I bring you over and over again, another view of this famous castle here at my personal portfolio website, this time as I captured it with some stormy clouds behind it.

I like experimenting and because of that I took this picture using photography technique known as "sandwich", when I combined 4 expositions into the single resulting photograph. I took each one of these isolated expositions from tripod, without any move of camera equipment, nor settings or focus change, so they were captured exactly in the same away. The only difference was, that I waited some minutes, till those stormy clouds moved a little as the wind picked them up and blew them over the castle buildings one after another. Later at the computer, when I combined these 4 isolated expositions during the post-processing phase in Photoshop, I chose and mixed together only those portions of clouds, which I believed complemented to the overall mood of resulting image and its composition.

So much for technical stuff behind this picture. If you are into some historical facts about this castle, here they are. I am sure that many of you already read my previous posts here at my blog, thus you know that this landmark is Europe's and perhaps even the world's famous castle. Be it either way, it is definitely one of the most popular castles in Slovakia. :)

The Orava Castle is colloquially known to have the nickname "The Eagle’s Nest", because of how its highest and oldest part sits on a massive rock formation. This natural formation is known as "castle cliff" which forms steep 112 meters / 367 feet high hill that serves as natural stronghold for the castle where this castle is also partially hidden by green coniferous trees surrounding it.

This castle went through a number of different owners during its time of existence as well as through a lot of renovations and fortifications. Unfortunately at the beginning of the 19th century the Orava Castle burnt down when a gigantic fire destroyed all wooden parts of the castle. However later it was archaeologically preserved and reconstructed so that it could continue to live on.

As I already mentioned, the Orava Castle is clearly seen as one of the most popular castles located in central Europe. It features number of fortified entry gates, ordered one after another and even a short tunnel, that leads to main courtyard. The castle is opened for those that come to visit and want to tour it. It can get quite spooky there at night and there are often spooky night shows that take place as well as popular theatrical performances, or other exhibitions that are scheduled throughout the year.

This castle is also a popular location for filming fairy tale, or horror movies. Did you know that many scenes of the world famous cult horror movie Nosferatu (1922) were filmed there?!

Anyway, expositions of Orava Castle are opened to the public during all seasons and because of that if you happen to be in the Orava region, near the town of Oravsky Podzamok, Slovakia, don't forget to tour interiors of this castle or at least take some exterior photos of it! This castle has so much to offer, both for tourists looking for history, as well as for photographers looking for well-preserved medieval architecture.