Schulmühle

Schulmühle is an amazing hidden gem tucked away in a lush green valley. This historic old mill is around 500 years old and got its name because the millers here used to teach the village kids. Today it's a yellow half-timbered house and a dark wooden mill building, sitting side by side above a small stream, the Schulmühlbach, that runs down through the meadow. This is an amazingly photogenic scene with the wooded hills rising behind it and the stream leading your eye right to the mill. It's such a quiet spot that you can set up right along the roadside where the water runs toward you, with the little cascades in the foreground and the buildings across the grass. That mix of the yellow timber house, the dark barn and all that green work amazingly together. Overcast days suit the scene perfectly and help keep the greens rich and the light even. The valley is often soft and misty in the morning which will give your shots a mellow, rural feel. This mill is privatly, a home with a small distillery making fruit brandy, so you can't get right up close to it. But it sits right along a public road so there is lots of space to play with compositions. The little shop only opens one day a week, on Wednesdays, if you want to look inside. There's a small hikers' car park nearby, so it's an easy one to reach on foot. (Heiligenstadt, Bavaria, Germany)