Mustafa Seven and his friend Hazem were attempting to escape the tourists in an Austrian village when they took this image. Rumoured to have inspired Disney’s Frozen franchise, Hallstatt has been known to attract up to 10,000 visitors a day during high season. Seven had seen many Instagram shots of the place and was curious to visit. He was taken aback by what he found.
“There were tourist buses and people everywhere,” he says. “Frankly, neither of us like taking landscape photos, but the fairytale surroundings pulled us along. When I realised every image I’d shot had someone in the frame, we decided to change our route and walk up the slips of the village instead.”
The cold weather and heavy snowfall made it hard going, but after half an hour the pair reached the edge of the village. They paused by a garden to rest a little, and it was there they found this docile, curious cat.
“I was trying to get closer to say hello and kept expecting it to get scared and run away, but it didn’t.
“We all seemed to be there for the same reason: to soak up a rare moment of peace and enjoy the view of the village, church and lake below us. It really felt like I was in a fairytale, like a scene that was too fictional to be real.”
