Light and shadows

Posted on Februar 23rd, 2015

Deep in the mountains, when the moon is rising and the shadows are playing with landscape, then you should take your camera and enjoy it.
After we reached, late in the night, the point short befor the path is going down to the valley, we thought, now is the right place and time to stay and shoot until the sun will come back again.
We had clear conditions, the moon was rising and the landscape was changing from image to image. On every new image I saw the shadows at a different place. So I pressed the butten again and again until I noticed the vanishing stars, because of the rising sun. Time to say goodbye and walk the long way back.

Saemtisersee

Posted on Februar 20th, 2015

A gorgeous view over the Alpstein and the Sämtisersee.
At this point I thought there are too many clouds in the sky for the night and maybe I couldn’t see too many stars. But a half hour later all clouds were disappeard and the sky was wonderful clear for the rest of the night.
We, Koni and me walked the whole way along the mountains until we reached the end of the valley. Then we made photos until the dawn begun and we walked through the valley back. It was a long nightly photowalk with a lot of images.

The cherry tree

Posted on Februar 18th, 2015

Are you boring about the dull winter weather? Don’t be sad, soon it’s spring again!
In a month is it spring time, calendar spring time. The weather spring will maybe wait a bit longer, we will see. Meantime you can enjoy this blooming cherry tree from the last spring. I love this image with all the white blossoms which are red lighted by the deep standing sun, short before the sun is setting.
But enough about the spring, for me I don’t have enough snow seen this year and I hope I can go for some alpine tours with my snow shoes and bring back a lot images of the beautiful white mountains.

s’Rhintl

Posted on Februar 15th, 2015

The bright light pollution in the left corner is the Rhine valley. In german it’s called Rheintal and the inhabitants they call it Rhintl.
I was here on the Alpstein, the near mountains of Appenzell, in the middle of the night and was looking for some starscape images. On this image you can clearly see how intense the light pollution is, even here on the mountains.
On the right corner you can also see the distinctive view of the mountains called Chrüzberg. It was a clear night, not too cold and a few minutes after I took this image the moon was rising up behind me.
Ah, if you ask what this strange smearing above the Rhintl is, this is not a post processing mistake, this is our galaxy the Milky Way

Panorama view in the Emmental

Posted on Februar 12th, 2015

The golden hour is coming to an end and the mountains become a golden crown.
I insist to go for a doggy walk not only around the corner, but for a more interesting walk with a sightseeing. So we decided to go to the Moosegg. What exactly the right place was to see a beautiful autumn. With all the warm light during the golden hour. It was also a good place to see the whole Bernese alpine panorama and because of the early snowfall a few days ago, we had this awesome sight to the snowy white mountains.
But my little furry friend had no eyes for the beauty of nature. The only thing he was interested in, was his ball.

Bernes Alps

Posted on Februar 9th, 2015

I walked up the steep hill, in the middle of the night, climbed the tall tower and waited the half night to see the sunrise over the Bernes Alps.
It was a bit cold, some degrees below zero and I was waiting until I see the sun rising over the mountains. But didn’t calculate with the high mountain to the east which was covering the sun until the red light was gone. This point is called Blueme (engl. Flower) don’t ask me why and it was not so difficult to find. Maybe this position is better for a sunset, when the sun shines to the front of the mountains and you can probably see the alpine glow.
What I like on this image, are the stars. On the left side, to the east you can already see a bright day sky with a single star and on the other side you find also a few stars in the sky.

Morning mist

Posted on Februar 7th, 2015

Peaceful embedded in a fine morning mist you can find this lovely landscape near Berne.
I love this view to the village called Schlosswil at the Emmental region. I can always see it when I go for a walk with Bubu in the morning. And this time was the view especially beautiful with all the pure white of the fresh fallen snow and the pastel tones in the sky.
The only thing why I didn’t take this image long time before, are all the thick power cords hanging across through the image. It is absolutely not possible to shoot any image without this ugly cables. But this time was the mood too stunning to go home without any photo. And at this point, if you ask yourself, what is this moron talking about power cables, I have to tell you: Yes, I manipulated this image in Photoshop, removed all the ugly parts and fixed the landscape, how it should be and I regret nothing!

Illuminated ways

Posted on Februar 5th, 2015

On the ground the illuminated way through the mountains and above us the illuminated way of the stars, the Milky Way.
I optimized and optimized allways the technique to get starscapes with visible landscapes. But this location under this conditions was a really hard piece of work. I shot this with my Canon 6D and a Samyang 14mm f/2.8. It was a moonless night a valley in the middle of the alps with narrow mountains around me and it was pitch dark.
For this image I took 4 shots. The first one was over 240 seconds with 800 ISO @ f/4 guided with an astronomical tracker. This brought me the beautiful sky. For the foreground without a smearing effect, I turned off the tracker and made a second shot with the same settings. But it was way too dark. Okay I need more light and I pushed up the ISOs to 1600 with 240 seconds, but it is still too dark. Well I thought, go to the limit and I shot a last one with 3200 ISO over 480 seconds! And I became a visible landscape, dark but visible.
It was really difficult to get a usable image under this conditions but I mastered it It took me about an hour to walk to this spot and more than a half hour to take this single image and another hour to post process it.

At the pond

Posted on Februar 2nd, 2015

If you look out of your window and you see a red sky on the eastern sky while the sun is setting…
…then you know, you have to snap your camera and run! And I was fast enough up at the edge of the forest to get some amazing shots of a burning sky.
Mostly I’m too slow or the fireworks ends to fast, but this time I catched the light. Too late to see the sun setting but fast enough for a stunning blue hour.