Monochrome World Of The Fagaras Castle

It's been ages since my last black and white, or monochrome post and it's sad honestly. This month I was thinking of doing architecture photo shoots in black and white as this category is my favorite when it comes to taking away colors, to focus on details.

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One of the impediment is matching time with light. During summer light can be too strong, if you don't go early in the morning or late in the evening, which makes it harder as we all have our daily activity and schedule.

While cleaning my folders, I came to realize I have a bunch of unused shots from my traveling and I can make them black and white and post them, so here I am today, with a set of monochrome photos.

This is an occasion for me to revisit my photos and remember those places where I took these photos. Today I'm going to post photos from the Fagaras castle, which I visited in 2023, a wonderful place with a bloody part, now open to the public. This was an entertainment area, equipped with tables, chairs and a piano too. I don't know what it used to be used for back in medieval times, it's possible it had the same intended purpose.

This is a good example to show the difference between colored and black and white from certain point of view. This was an exhibition room inside the castle, hosting a temporary exhibition of traditional fold costumes. These costumes are interesting when you see the original as colors are of essence here. When you take away the colors, the costumes are becoming secondary and the eye can focus on the surroundings and architecture.

Roman altar from the 2nd, 3rd centuries from Hoghiz, which is a village in Brasov County, Transylvania, România. I didn't like history much when I was in school, shame on me but once you grow up, you realize how important it is to know the past. It always amazes me when I see these testimonies of the past, especially this old. It makes me think of how life must have been back in those days.

Researching what you see also helps a lot in learning. Here for example I had to research where Hoghiz (Olthévíz in Hungarian) is as I had no clue. Now I know it has some really nice historical buildings that worth visiting. My list of places to visit is getting longer and longer ...

Triptych altar from the middle of the 17th century, brought from the Evangelical church of Cincsor. I love the vaulted ceiling and could have paid more attention to the framing and capture more of the ceiling, but when you're not alone, it's difficult to keep up the pace and take high quality photos as well.

Prayers from 1787, painted on wood. Now you may argue that this is not a good choice for monochrome, but imagine what colorblind people see every day. They don't know what colors look like.

Genealogical stone from 1728. In this case monochrome is the best choice. The text is in Latin of course, but it's unreadable on the original as the color of the stone makes it harder.

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Here you can see the vaulted ceiling better.

And here's my favorite setup. I loooove taking photos of narrowing corridors, spaces. In this case it was really difficult, because there were several rooms connected through doors and there were always people in the way, but here it is.

These are guild convocation tables from the 19th century. I love looking at these and always think how proud those people part of a guild must have been.

Rope makers' guild statute, from 1839. I'm a bit confused here as I can't decide if this is hand written, or printed. The frame on the paper is printed, the title too, but the rest? I think it is printed.

There's no castle exhibition without tin plates. These are from the second half of the 18th century.

If you're a newbie, you may want to check out these guides: