The moon lights the way

Posted on August 21st, 2015

A bright fullmoon is shining to the landscape of the Gotthard region.
The landscape is bright and it looks nearly like a daily scene, except the few stars which are strong enough to overrule the power of the reflected sunlight.
How beautiful is this landscape especially at night, if, yes if, the dumb photographer rechecked the focus. Oh no, with full of anticipation I watched my tresure two days later in the lightroom and realized, that all images I made with my 14mm Samyang on the Sony A7s are out of focus. What a shame
Full of regret I tested my lens with a canon mount at day again, to find out what happend. Normally this is a very easy lens to get in focus, turn on the focus ring until you are 2mm before the infinity mark and all is fine. But on the the Sony with the FE adapter, strangly the infinity point is now between 0.7m and 1m which is far away where it should be.
Well, now I know, actually I allready knew it, I should check the images, after I took it, with a full zoom in.

Melting water

Posted on August 19th, 2015

Far away, high up in the mountains, where all the big rivers are born…
After another hour of walking a steep trail up to a ridge, the moon came over the peak from the other valley side. And the mountain meadow shows me a creek of fresh melted snow, swooshing down in front of me.
That’s a good place for a break, I thought and took some images of the the lovely landscape. After I checked the time, I realized, that the day is nearly over and so with a regret, I decided to turn back instead of walking entirely up to the ridge. Therefore I don’t know what great landscape is hiding behind the hill, it seems I have to go again to see what is behind the meadows.

It clears off

Posted on August 17th, 2015

Back to the trip at the Gotthard pass…
The sun is gone, the light is dwindling and the clouds are blowing away. Good, it seems this can be a good night for starscape photos. After the rainshower and all the clouds, was it the right decision to continue walking up into the mountains.
Now it’s time to pack together and walk further, because it will now getting dark very fast. And so was it, after the next two curves I had to turn on my headlamp…

Meteor shower

Posted on August 13th, 2015

Due to current events, breaking news from space…
Some of you may already now it, around the 12th of August you can see an intense meteor shower at the sky, each year. If there is no moon and there are no clouds. And after a few years, this year the time was right and all parameters were good or even best.
During the week I was checking the weather forecast several times a day and yes, it should clear up at this perfect night. So I was planing my tour and I decided to go to the Toggenburg, especially to the lake of Schwendi. Because I can drive with my car nearly to the lake. Well this might sound like, what a lazy bone Tom Fear is, but I wanted to take some timelapse shots. And so I packed nearly all my equipment. Five cameras, five lenses, four tripods, a dolly and two controllers. All in all, about 25kg, which I wouldn’t want to tow up to a peak.
And so I spent my night by the lake and after the timelapse engines were working, Tom Fear took out his mattres and a cushion and enjoyed to watching the sky for a few hours…

The barrier lake

Posted on August 10th, 2015

After a half hour of walking, I saw the moon coming up from behind the mountains.
I throw my backpack on the floor, built up my tripod and mounted my camera… and the moon was already half hidden behind the clouds. I tried to change the lens for more focal length, but then was the moon fully covered.
As you can see, the clouds are covering still nearly the whole sky but it’s early in the evening and only ten o’clock, so I have enough time to walk ahead and see the stars between the mountains.
And while I was climbing up the hill, the sky becomes brighter and brighter…

The rain magnet

Posted on August 8th, 2015

The only rain cloud over whole Europe, was exactly above me.
Yes that’s true, I found it again. After driving two and a half hour until I reached the top of the Gotthard pass, it beguns to rain. And with a check on the rain radar app, I had the certainty, it was the only one, a small one just a bit larger than the spot which marks my position on the map.
Darn, I thought I could walk to a lake and take photos of a clear night sky and now it rains. But wait! It’s only a small cloud and therefore it is a chance the rain will stop soon, because the cloud is passed by.
I waited a half an hour and yes it stops to rain. The clouds where still there but I thought I have a good chance that the clouds will disappear too. And so I started hiking while the clouds covered the most part of the sky and walked into the darkness full of hope…

Sunlight at night

Posted on August 5th, 2015

The light of the “midnight sun” guided me home.
Every interesting excursion is coming to an end and so ended my journey to the Rhone glacier. On my way back to my car I shot a last panorama with two images down to the Valais valley and directly into the sun, pardon the moon.
It was one day before the fullmoon and the moon light was so bright I could walk without any additional light, but I didn’t it for my safety The nice thing about bright moonlight nights are, you can shoot with a low ISO setting and you will get smooth and noiseless images.
Let us close the story of my adventure at the Rhone glacier with this image and see what the next excursion brings.

Furkablick

Posted on August 3rd, 2015

You should have the view to the Furkapass.
This suggests the name of the hotel, but I’m watching in the other direction and so I can’t see the Furkapass.
I’m now on my way back home, after I spent the half night in the middle of the alps at the impressive Rhone glacier. And like usually I couldn’t resist having more stops to take more images. This beautiful clear night is inviting me to take more images.
And so you can not see now the Furkapass, where I come from, but because the air is so clear, we can see far away at the horizon the Oberalppass to the Surselva in the Kanton Graubuenden.

The Rhone glacier

Posted on Juli 31st, 2015

The Rhone glacier seen from a stony slope.
All the rubble you see, is moved by the large glacier in ancient time. Now it is shrinking and a few years ago the tongue was covering also the part where now the glacier lake is. On the other side of the valley, you can clearly see, where the border of the glacier was.
But it is still really impressiv and even up here I could here a constant swoosh of the water coming out of the glacier. Thanks to the fullmoon, I could see the whole landscape by my eyes and the camera was also not stressed by high ISOs.
At the lower border of the image you can see strange white stuff. This isn’t snow, these are a special canvas to save the glacier. I don’t think this will work, but let them try it. I like glaciers and next time I try to get more closer to a glacier.

Life between rubble

Posted on Juli 29th, 2015

A small little garden between a large field of stones.
I was walking along the marked hiking path and somewhere I must lost the signs and then I was surrounded by stones on a steep slope. Well this was a bit over my limits and I thought, this is way more difficult than a normal hiking trail. So I walked back and I saw a way going down and I followed it. This trail was was a good piece easier. And after a while I thought, okay, this is enough climbing now, I will stay here to take my photos.
I planted my backpack to the ground and explored the nearer surroundings. What should I say, I found a ladder and a yellow-blue sign. I was now on a via ferrata! Okay, that explains the stony way and next time I should better watch for the hiking signs
Can you guess, what you can’t see on the blurry part of the image?