Striking photograph of medieval castle at sunrise wins postcard competition
A captivating picture of Bezděz castle won the 2023 competition for the most beautiful Czech postcard. The photographer, Ladislav Renner, told Czech Radio how he managed to capture the arresting shot.
A stunning medieval Gothic castle snaking its way up a tree-covered hill shrouded in mist, low clouds clinging to its back and softly lit by the backdrop of a rising sun. This is the picture postcard that won the competition for the most beautiful Czech tourist postcard of 2023. The photographer, Ladislav Renner, took not just one but an incredible five out of the top ten winning images. He told Czech Radio about how the striking picture came to be:
“It was a bit of a fluke – one evening an acquaintance reached out to me on Facebook to say that a place for a hot-air balloon ride had become available at the last moment. The next day I set out early in the morning towards Bezděz. It was my first ever hot-air balloon ride so I was a bit anxious, but I survived and the conditions for taking photographs were perfect.”
Bezděz castle, located some 20 kilometres southeast of Česká Lípa in northern Bohemia, was built in the 13th century by order of Ottokar II of Bohemia. It is one of several spots around the country that Renner has photographed for postcards and which occupy places in the competition’s top ten, including of the landscape around his native Česká Lípa (2nd place), Trosky Castle (4th place), Jedlová in the Lusatian Mountains (6th place) and Zvířetice castle near Mladá Boleslav (7th place).
Renner’s almost too-good-to-be-true shots were competing against 74 postcards, 78 tourist business cards, 62 calendars and 12 tourist diaries and passports in the contest, now in its 26th year. Although Renner says postcards are becoming something of a historical artefact, there are still some niche uses for them.
“People don’t send postcards anywhere near as much as they used to. That’s partly to do with the cost, how the price of stamps is getting more expensive and so on. But there is a global postcrossing community, where people all over the world send postcards to each other, there’s an online system for it with its own rules. These people use postcards a lot.”
Renner, who has already won the competition several times in past years, says he has never owned a car, and travels around the country using public transport, a bike or his own two feet to capture his stunning snapshots. He is a self-taught photographer, first trying his hand at the art at the age of twenty-five by researching online and taking inspiration from experienced photographers whose work he liked. Now he takes photographs using both a camera and a drone, photographing architecture, interiors, and urban settings as well as his iconic landscape photographs. Where possible, he tries to combine his photography trips with family outings, so he can show his two daughters the beauty of the Czech countryside.
“I fear that my dreams have already been fulfilled. For me, the high point of my photographic career was working with the Czech Tourism agency, which promotes the landscapes and monuments of our country to the whole world, and thanks to that my photographs really got everywhere around the globe – in airports, everywhere possible. Czech Tourism did at least two promotional campaigns with my photographs, so that was really wonderful.”
