Member-only story
Finding The Shepherd
Traveling through the Carpathian Mountains of Romania — I’ve done it twice — removes time and replaces it with something far less mechanical or ordered. 12th century, 18th century, fact, fiction, war and peace — the mountains have absorbed it all here and as you wheel through in an old car with the windows down, crushed together with children of all ages, you do the thing that all humans dread doing, but in the end saves us: you lose yourself to the terrifying grandness of everything.
On this day, my father-in-law — a Romanian himself — and I were on our own adventure. We had determined to go see a castle in the afternoon hours. I had seen an interesting spot to photograph it, by a cross on a neighboring hill. This spot we found, and that was an adventure in and of itself, with its hidden entrance and steep rocky climb. This is one kind of photograph. Travel and landscape photographers know it well — it’s the one you research, the one you determine to find, a kind of bucket list shot. And in the end, you feel more accomplished than the photograph does.
But there’s another kind of shot. You know this one, too. You don’t plan it, just prepare for it…
