These photos were taken a while ago, on March 19 – so much has happened in between we fell seriously behind with regular kite aerial photography work. The views right now are very different, almost unrecognisable in places, and yet perhaps that is the point. Every stroll is always different, whether in the streets below or up in the clouds above.
A stroll is something so very urban, isn’t it? Yes, you can walk among the fields, wander through a flowering meadow, or lose yourself in the woods for hours. But a stroll – Spazier, balade, paseo – seems to require a town, a city, a certain closeness of walls and lives. A city park, urban gardens, a tree-lined avenue – these tamed fragments of nature are fine for a stroll. But wild countryside, a village road, a narrow field path – no, one cannot quite take a stroll there. It takes a town, a city to stroll.
A city. Houses and people. And stories. Layers of history that the taps of feet, bouncing off the walls and pavements, reconstruct like a crude LP, skipping and repeating, yet somehow still carrying a melody that goes up in the sky.
So, a stroll above Ljubljana. We have told you how this city got its name, we have traced its beginnings, we have explored its Baroque centre and its old suburbs – so we feel there is no need for a deep story this time. Just a stroll, with pictures.
The old town.
… along the banks of Ljubljanica to the Triple bridge, the Plečnik masterpiece. Cross the river to Prešeren square, the symbolic centre of Ljubljana
The circle on the square, as Gregor likes to tell, commemorates the historic landing of Napoleon in a montgolfière after his successful aerial escape from Elba – and that’s why Ljubljana has a monument to Napoleon on the French Revolution square … Small details, half-remembered and half-invented stories, fragments that attach themselves to places and refuse to leave.
And up to the Castle hill …
One of the things that happens when strolling is noticing well-known sights in a different light, at a different pace, from a slightly altered perspective. Familiarity softens, and the ordinary becomes uncertain again, as if seen for the first time.
Having an eye in the sky changes perspective entirely. Can a kite take a stroll too? Above the city centre, not so much – the trees and taller buildings disturb the air, and the venerable blue rokkaku struggles, unsettled and wavering. The intrepid flyer senses these tensions travelling down the line and grows more and more nervous.
Up on the hill the wind is strong and gusty, the line taut, the kite veering in the river of air, just a little too heavy for its liking. It resists and yields in turns, caught between control and freedom.
The hand begins to ache before the kite is finally tied down to a less than ideal spot – a fence surrounding a giant antenna.
The flyer is nervous again, but the kite seems almost to enjoy itself. Even the hungry, dreadful kite-eating trees do not trouble it today.
Far beneath the kite, Ljubljana glimmers in the setting sun of spring. A scent of vis vitalis permeates the warm spring air.
And you can feel how everything is just about to burst with life.
A perfect stroll: in the sky, and through the streets.
Kite aerial photos shot with Nikon P330 on The Original Blue rokkaku by Janez Vizjak.
WONDERFULL!!!!
Thanks, István! 🙂