garrison beau scott

Once we passed the Industrial Palace and left the Exhibition Grounds behind, and entered Stromovka Park it felt as if were transported into another world. Being late November, it seemed as if we were the only ones in the entire park and had the long meandering paths and trees to ourselves.

As I mentioned in my last post, when the park was created in 1268, it’s original design was as the Royal Hunting Park, a use that continued through the reign of Rudolph II (1576 - 1611). It was during his stewardship that the park grew in size and these were built.

Being a man of the renaissance and a Habsburg, Rudolph II and a few creative ideas under his silken and billowing sleeve. He wanted to make a grand entrance for his guests, so he had underground tunnels built from Letna, where one would get on a small boat and float on the man-made river to a series of openings built into the hillside of Stromovka. They would then disembark and enter the park through one of these gates. And then go shoot some deer.

Hidden Entry, Praha, 2001

Just about at the point where we thought about turning around, as we had gotten lost in all senses of the word, and not just exploring lost, we turned the corner and saw a sign for Troja. I had remembered the name from the section in our guide book that listed places to go visit “further afield.” So we decided to keep walking and rolled up on the Industrial Palace which serves as the entrance to the Exhibition Ground and Stromovka Park.

The Industrial Palace dates to 1891, Stromovka Park has a history that goes a bit farther back. In 1268, Czech king Premsyl Otakar II founded Stromovka (place of trees) as a royal hunting park. But first, the Industrial Palace, as shown here with some of the temporary scaffolding used for an event we either just missed, or were too early for.

I know photographers who, when out shooting, will find the name of a place, or a building, or whatever it is they are shooting. They will record f/stop, shutter, focal length and sometimes wind direction and what they had for lunch. Okay, those last two I made up and I’m not in any way making fun of those who pay attention to those kinds of details. I’m just not one of them.

For better or worse, when I go out shooting, I click away ignorantly and then move on without any idea of what, where and how I am shooting. Obviously there are times when even I know what it is in front of my camera. Empire State Building, the Grand Canyon, Pacific Ocean…but for today’s shot, well, it would have been nice to know the name of this church, if only to be able to share it with you. Alas.

What I do know about this shot is that after the rain stopped, we crossed the Vltava, heading west into a part of Prague that wasn’t included in the maps showing the Malá Strana or Hradcany. New territory indeed, and the thing to do with new territory is to continue to forge ahead. This part of Prague was definitely less historical, much more suburbia, complete with gas stations and other lesser romantic scenes. That is until we got to the intersection of a street I failed to write down, because you know, I don’t write down those things.

We were standing there waiting for the light to change when I looked down the street to my right and saw the church. The street we were waiting to cross dead-ended right into the front steps of it and when the light turned to let us cross, I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. When I got to the other side, I framed it up, but it just didn’t look right. I needed it to be straight on. So, I set my focus, waited until the light turned again, ran out into the middle of the intersection, framed it up and again, failed to write anything down.