Moonshine lake

Posted on August 24th, 2015

This HDR-Panorama-Night-Image is another picture from my trip in the Gotthard region.
And it is also another sample of my out of focus series. But you can anyway see the mood of this fullmoon night in the middle of the alps.
And I can promise you, in real was the landscape sharp and in full color

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.

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…

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?

Gantrisch

Posted on Juni 12th, 2015

Watch this panorama in full resolution of over 5000 pixel width.
On the left side you see the town of Thun with the lake of Thun and the light pollution in the clouds. Behind it, if you zoom in, you can see three peaks, the Eiger, Moench and Jungfrau. The large mountains of the midground is the Gantrisch region with the Gantrisch in the center which gives this region the name. The light on the right side came from the Fribourg region and the moon which is coverd by clouds.
Because it’s more easy now, to take starscapes with modern cameras, I need more challenge. And so I took this horizontal HDR panorama of 3×3 images. I made 3 times a bracket serie of 3 images.

Late night show

Posted on Juni 10th, 2015

If the day goes to the end, you can either watch tv or you go out and watch nature.
In my last post I gave you the advice to go early enough to see the sunrise. But why go not a bit earlier and you can see all the beautiful stars too?
So I did it and I was early enough on the peak and I could take some nice starscapes of the alpine skyline. And like always again, I am surprised how much light, my dream team, the Sony A7s with the Samyang 24mm f/1.4 , can take. It’s really amazing what I get. This is a manually made HDR image out of 3 images with 2EV steps. And it’s so easy to take the image, set the bracket series and push the button.
One tip, if you are also a Sony shooter: bracket series are a bit foolish on the sony cams. You can not take a bracket serie with 2 second timer delay, you have allway press the shutter until the third image is running. But if you use an external shutter release with a cable, then you can use the bulb pusher and you will not shake your image.