There has always been an ambiguity in my mind, concerning the medieval period in the area that is now my country. You see our educational system is very keen on informing us about the amazingness and glory of ancient Greece, as well as the historical events of the Greek revolution in 1821, that led to the creation of modern Greece. In between though, there are almost twenty centuries and although most Greeks seems to believe that they are direct offsprings and rightful heirs of the ancients ones, that huge amount of time seems to be missing from the collective conscience! The Byzantine Empire has been called to bridge that gap in our conscience, in a very flexible (so flexible that someone might even call it distorted) interpretation of history.
I didn't know much about all that, as a child, but as I was getting older, one grade after another, I couldn't help noticing the big gaps in the dates of our history books. And a lot of question marks started to appear in my child mind.
What was happening here during the medieval times?
Did we have knights with swords and spears, riding fearsome horses?
And most important of all, who built all those castles that are scattered around the country?
Those questions (and some more) led me, years later, to roam around the country photographing castles, the last remains of that lost era!
Let me show you two of them, as I captured them through my lens, in one of those trips and don't worry it won't be a history lesson, there are much better places online, for that :)
Koroni
We arrived in the evening. One car, three guys and a lot of cameras. It was the distant 2007 and it was October. The weather was nice and the evening sun brilliant! We had luck on our side :)
We were mainly shooting film but I had with me my brand new (at the time) canon EOS 5D, a camera that is now considered ancient, in terms of technology. I gave it away many years ago but I have kept a lot of raw files that are now shinning through the new editing programs of 2023!
The car was in-kind sponsorship by volvo, so a few thank you pictures were in order :)
The main subject of my pictures is, of course, the castle itself but I did take a few looks around and captured a few more pictures at the port.
If not for the non destructive nature of raw files, those pictures would have been completely ruined. I was terrible in editing back then and I am truly embarrassed to show you the lousy results that I had produced from those same files!
Fortunately I didn't have social media either, so only a few people saw them in their first, pathetic appearance :)
Pylos
The next evening we were at Pylos. A new day, a new castle and a new way to approach it! This time we had a boat and if that's not the best way to take pictures of a castle that is facing the sea, then I don't know what is!
Although I had to straighten the horizon in almost every single shot :)
The weather was dark from the one side and light from the other. I like both options. And maybe the darker images add something to the medieval mood that I was trying to capture!
Below is a shot of the "heavy artillery" that we had with us, a Hasselblad 503cw, just for the record!
This one is a newer castle, compared to the previous. It was built at the end of (or maybe a little after) the era that we call the Middle Ages but it is, nevertheless, just fine for my project :)
And the evening sun was for one more time brilliant!
As the day was coming to an end, we headed back to the town. Tomorrow another castle is waiting for us but that's for another post :)
All the pictures and the words are mine.
Thank you for reading and if you want to know more about me you can check out my introduction post.
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