‘The Lake’ from geoff tompkinson on Vimeo.

For many years now I have been fortunate enough to live for part of each year on the shore of Lake Hallstatt in Upper Austria. This video is not about the town – but about the Lake itself. Hallstatt, the town, is famous for its production of salt, dating back to prehistoric times. It is a very popular summer tourist destination – so popular with the Chinese that they have actually built a replica of the town in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong. The whole area has Unesco World Heritage status. Lake Hallstatt has been referred to as the “melancholic lake”, the “still fjord” and the “vision of a perfect mountain lake”. It is a classic relic of the Ice Age and it has a total area of 8.58 square KM lying between the steep Obertraun and Hallstatt mountains and Bad Goisern. It is the fifth largest of the Salzkammergut lakes. Although this lake is one of the darker, colder, less inviting lakes of the region, as a photographer I decided to use this darkness and stillness as a device to reveal the true beauty of the lake through its mirror-like surface.