Trakai Warnings Or Dangers

Svyturys beer (€ 1.2 for 0.5 l) brewed in Klaipeda tasted delicious in Trakai. Just in case you drive, 0.4 mg% alcohol blood level was acceptable in Lithuania. Just in case you drive to Poland... hmm... in Poland it's... 0.0 but we have less expensive local beer (€ 1.1 or less).

Well, try gira instead of beer. It was traditional, Lithuanian, non-alcoholic, a little bit fermented drink made of bread. I liked it.

Some passages, doors, stairs and especially wooden galleries around yards of the Trakai palce were narrow. They were too narrow to allow two-way traffic for visitors. That's why there was one-way traffic for visitors, signed by arrows. Follow the arrows. Some parts of the passages were closed as well.

These round stairs, on my piccture, were put inside the tower of the residential part of the Trakai Castle. Well, there was one-way traffic there (down only) but, anyway, the stairs were very steep. Be careful and watch your steps.

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I visited the Trakai castle on business day in June. There were quite many visitors but I would except more in July and August esp. in weekends. Take more time to visit the Trakai castle that time.

It was a little bit uncomfortable to wait in front of each room of the historical exposition in the Palace but I can't complain esp. after a visit to really over-crowded... Vatican museum or waiting for a ticket to Louvre or Eiffel Tower in Paris haha.

Shores of Galve Lake in Trakai in some parts were surrounded by dangerous swamps overgrown with green, in June, reeds. Better do not leave signed walkways and trails. The views over the lake and with white Uzutrakis palace, located on northern bank of Galve Lake, in the background on my picture, were enough pretty from signed tracks.

The western wall of the Trakai castle was lighted by bright sun in the afternoon. It was favourite place for taking family photographs for many visitors.

Most of them made the same, common, mistake. Do not follow them. Look at the guy taking a picture of a couple sitting on the rocks with castle walls and gate in the background. Hmm... to take a good picture he should get closer to the couple. Otherwise the persons on the photograph will be too small.

If you take a picture of dark high cross/chapel/statue on light background of sky and if you can see only black object with no details on light background:
1. Don't worry, take it easy, keep smiling :-),
2. Improve your digital picture using appropriate software (use gamma correction), look at my picture and compare with the same picture in previous tip (before improvement),
3. follow the links below for more, please.


MORE:
- Digital Photography Review - the world's best internet service on digital cameras;
- ShortCourses - a complete guide to digital cameras, digital photography, and digital video;
- Digital Photography. The Textbook - for beginners in photography,
- photo.net - one of the world's largest photo portals online.
Have a great fun :-)

Look at my picture. It was taken using automatic set up of my digital camera. Hmm... black shape of high cross-chapel-statue? with white sky in the background.

Well, it was very difficult, sometimes impossible to take good or even acceptable picture of dark object (cross/chapel) on light background (sky). There was too much contrast for each camera never mind how expensive it was.

What to do?
1. Try to lower the contrast:
- choose darker background (change angle to have more dark trees in the background or wait for... worse weather with darker sky),
- lighter the dark object (statue) with your flash lamp or any other lamp,
2. Try to choose film of lower speed (100 DIN),
3. Try to set up focus manually on the darker object.