… This time Cerenna and I were on a 6-week assignment for Syracuse Language in Europe. We were working on a series of box covers for France, Italy and Germany. Chris Andrews, my art director, had suggested I took a very specific angle favored by most world travel photographers. Easy to say... we thought when we discovered what fun this little precision really meant...

The place is quite an attraction: Cars, RVs and busses from all over Europe were jammed on the little country roads of this sunny summer day. Wide-eyed and restless snickers, we were almost fighting our way through hundreds of vacationers and more serious hikers. It was about 3:00 p.m. on that late August afternoon and we were strolling our way up on a popular dirt path lost in the middle of a lush forest. The air was warm and pleasant. "Easy hike…" we thought to ourselves. As we arrived to a middle-sized iron bridge, we encountered a painter. Sitting on a convenient folding chair, he was busy outlining the length of the magnificent fortress with a light color of a pastel brushstroke. Lost in his occupation, he didn't acknowledge us at first… Stepping out of our excitement for a moment, we suddenly came to wonder why the view we were getting from this so popular spot was not the image that we were supposed to come back with... We greeted the artist and showed him a post card that we had just bought at a shop nearby. We then looked up in the vague direction he was pointing at for us. A frown started to form on our foreheads. In a blink of an eye, we understood that the two-hour hike we had just had seemed only the warm-up to a second one definitely out-of-the-beaten-path. Our thirst for adventure had just been teased and we joyfully turned back, thanked our unexpected guide and headed down, looking up to the right a the steep hill he had described.

Two hours later, we were facing a brand new challenge. Gravel and loose stones were the foundation of a surpringly steep pathway we had begun to escalade. The day was coming towards 5 p.m. and we already knew that this was only going to be a prospective climb. The sun had moved quite a distance and was starting to cast heavy shadows on the castle's front walls. From a standing and upright position, we had soon adopted a crawling and stiffer progression. This was not a beginner hike. But we had no choice. Giving up was not an option. Hiring a helicopter, like most stock photographers would do, was none either. We hung up to the motivation of the moment we would get to our destination...

We had been climbing for forty minutes when we both started to show definite signs of fatigue. Our legs were shaking and safety imposed onto us to take a few pictures from where we had arrived and turn back. Coming down was not the easiest part. It was sometimes more of an unexpected slide than hike. I must admit both our minds struggled against the idea of not coming back the next day…

A long and heavy sleep night had restored our enthusiasm as a church bell welcomed 7:00a.m. on the next day. After a hearty typical German breakfast we anxiously walked out into the cool morning air. My photography backpack was tight on my hips and shoulders. I had given up the tripod in order to free both my hands. Cerenna smiled to me and said, "let's do it!" Our auberge was half an hour away from the castle and we hiked our way back to the hill at a fast and easy pace. As we arrived to the feet of the hill, familiar stones and impressive rocks were standing still as if awaiting us. Taking a deep breath, we embraced the adventure once more. For a while, it almost seemed easier than the previous day. Sometimes, our feet would allow gravel to fall down behind us and our healthy mental spirit began to shift with them. It was as if the issue was known already. It was as if we wouldn't make it to this unknown place we were looking for. Maybe there was no such place, after all. Maybe a helicopter was really what it took to achieve this assignment. Maybe...

Sitting on a sturdy rock and judging by the distance we had just covered up, I estimated our climb a good 40 minutes. As we were breathing our doubts away, I looked up to the right and tried to comprehend what was there to go by. "I think we have to head this way for a while…" I said to Cerenna. She stared at me as if I had pointed to a ghost. Holding tight to my energy and to a wild feeling that was flirting with craziness, I said "Yeah... I'm sure it's this way..." as if I really meant it. We went on. Crawling, grabbing carefully whatever seemed solid enough to carry us a step higher. We soon came to an even steeper cliff. Climbing trees would have been the only way up, at this point. Trying to recover her breath, Cerenna threw a short sentence in my direction. She was going to stay right there. She was not going farther. I nodded. "Don't move, I'll look up this way and I'll let you know if there's anything to be seen..." She steadily locked both her feet behind a tree trunk and laid back recovering. Even in this position she was still almost upright... I resumed. It seemed to me like there was a path right at the base of the cliff in front of me. Perhaps one foot wide... but a path! I engaged myself, thinking of Christopher Columbus, Mark Twain, Rambo and held tight to the cliff's vertical façade to my right while trying to forget the void to my left. It was sure a steep one. My foot kicked a stone. I didn't hear it bounce on the ground underneath me after a good second or two. "Ho! La! La!" I screamed inside. I then crawled under a large and mossy tree trunk that strong winds had probably torn down. A path… and I suddenly realized there was a path indeed, or seemed to be, was leading me towards the West, where the castle was still sleeping. Maybe I was just inventing because the ground had suddenly become leveled. I stopped for a while and put two fingers in my mouth, took a deep breath and blew a loud and joyful whistle in the crisp morning air. From her tree, where she had wondered about me, Cerenna heard my victory and knew I was doing OK. She must have smiled again as a second and longer whistle tore the silence.

I was now sitting. Sitting not only because I was tired, but also because my legs and my entire body had started to shake. I'm not sure if it was fear that had finally caught onto me or the intense excitement that was inflaming my spirit. I sat straight and took two long breaths as if I meant to call back serenity inside me. Everywhere around me was an unrivaled marvelously breathtaking panorama. I was sitting on a huge rock that was garding Neuschwanstein Castle! This was it! This was The Spot! I had discovered it! To my right and in front of me, I could embrace miles and miles of a glorifying and movie-like view. The Bavarian country was kneeling at my feet as if waiting for me to say something. I laughed and threw both fists in the blue sky. "I made it!!!" I shouted. Carefully, I put my backpack down on the ground next to me and sent another musical message to Cerenna. Another clear and victorious claim that echoed from the mountains cheering me to my left. It was like the whole mountain said, "Yes! I know!"

As if starting a precise and very important task, I grabbed my medium format camera and set a wide-angle lens on it. My hands were moving like robots. I was not thinking anymore. I was in full automatic pilot and all I had to do was spend another hour emptying the reserve of film I had brought all the way from the United States with me. I looked all around me once more, forced air inside my lungs and held the camera tight to my face. The trigger went down as my index depressed it. The familiar and pretty loud sound of the big camera mirror went up to reveal the beauty of the castle onto the film. Surprisingly enough I didn't hear the second part of the familiar noise… Surprisingly enough, the mirror never came back down as if still mortified by the view. Startled, I pressed on the trigger once more to make sure it was just inattention on my part. Nothing happened. The camera was not responding to my attempts. I tried to wind the film. The lever sat there, stubborn as a mule… "Ho no!!!" I whispered to myself, trying not to spread the rumor to the trees behind me. I began fighting the idea that my wonderful camera had become a useless black thing in the palm of my hand. I couldn't believe it. In a blink of an eye, my spirit overviewed the company, the plane, the drive, the hike, the climb, the smile, the whistle and this was the result of it all...

Despite my distress and anger, laughter escaped from my throat. I gave in to irony. I could not refrain it. I felt like throwing my camera in the void, turn back and never come again. I then thought of something. Something that relieved me for a second, although I was not completely satisfied with the thought. I had a spare camera! A regular 35mm along with several rolls of Velvia film. For a fraction of a second, the scary thought of breaking that camera too couldn't help teasing my mind. Carefully, but extremely quickly, I took it out of its bag and started shooting, as if I wanted to make sure.

It was past 10:00am. The sun had just come up from behind the East Mountains to my left, sparkling the Neuschwanstein Castle with a gorgeous yellow light. In the blue air, a couple of ravens passed by me, reminding me how free and happy I was. I came back to my senses. "Come on! It's a beautiful day!"
Emmanuel

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