Blackberries

Posted on Januar 26th, 2014

Hmm, delicous! Wild blackberries at the edge of the wood and you can pluck and eat directly or you can make jam. But the blackberries are like weed here. The whole forest floor is grown of the thorny tendrils. And they grow all over, at the end the forest floor is completely covered with the thorny blackberry bushes. Good our farmers are cutting down the bushes from time to time.

The barrier lake

Posted on Januar 26th, 2014

This is one of maybe one hundert barrier lakes in Switzerland. I shoot this photo in april after a long winter, not like this winter. And you can see at the border of the lake the broken ice. Each time when they used the water in the barrier lake to generate electricity, the water surface sunk a bit deeper and crushed the ice at the shore. Good to have so many mountain valleys to get clean power, more or less.

The enchanted castle

Posted on Januar 25th, 2014

There were rumors about a castle, deep in the wood, nobody knows exactly about it. Good reason to pack my gear and my boots for a hike thru the spinney. Armed with our tripods, we fighted against thick brushwood until we saw deep in the wood this beautiful castle. It was an especially night were you could see Venus, Jupiter and the Moon near together. It seems they were shining down to this enchanted place to set the castle in the right light.
For this image I needed 12 images with different shutterspeed over 6EV.

Fog over the lake

Posted on Januar 23rd, 2014

For another test journey, two of my friends and I were going to the Kloental. For this event I organized a Canon 5DmkII and rented some Lenses to test what I can expect from more expensive gear than my Canon 60D with the Tokina 11-22mm f/2.8. This shot was taken by the 5DmkII with the Canon 24mm f/1.4 by 800ISO and 4s 8 times. Short before I took this image, the fog was so thick, we couldn’t see the lake and suddenly the fog disappeared and the bright full moon set the valley in this moody atmosphere.
After this test shooting I ordered a Canon 5DmkII and a 16-35mm f/2.8 which I still use.

Voting for more colors during wintertime

Posted on Januar 22nd, 2014

This image is a call for more color in this dull winter days. I mean nothing against winter, with full of snow. You can go for skiing and take some walks in sparkling powder or take a sledge and speed down a hill. But this… dark foggy days without light and snow. Temperatures to cold to going out but to warm for snow and there is only mud on the paths. Hey I didn’t order this! I want to make a change. Sigh, it doesn’t help, I have to go up to the mountains to see more snow and less fog or more precise to see the fog only from its upper side.
The only thing I have to say is: “DER BERG RUFT!!!”

Ducks on the lake

Posted on Januar 21st, 2014

It was one of the first spring days in the year, as I was walking around the lake. On this picture I used the first time a new technique to eliminate ghosts in a HDR image. It is a 3 shot bracket series and although it was less than a second to take all pictures, the ducks moved. And after the HDR processing you’ve got ducks with multible heads like hydras. To fix this, go to photoshop or a similar programm, lay the hdr image and a second image, which fits best in brigthness, behind it. Take a layer mask and rubber it through. After that correct the brightness with a brightness layer until you can’t see a difference at the borders e voilà a perfect hdr image without any ghosts.

Homeland

Posted on Januar 19th, 2014

It was a cold winter day and short before the sun disappeared. And I was to the right time at the right place, to take this beautiful winter sunset. The sunset in cold winter days are not so colorful as in other seasons. But look at the wonderful pastel colors in the sky. Isn’t that awesome, isn’t it? So every season has its own charme, to get great images. You have just to do it!

Clouds at Tschappina

Posted on Januar 18th, 2014

This is not the first image from Tschappina. And so you may know, we were not so lucky with the weather. At the first time it was foggy at night. At the second time it was foggy at night too. And I thought I checked the weather as best as I can and controlled all webcams before I was driving two hours to the destination. But the fog, this beast, came out after I was on my way. And guess what kind of weather it was at our third trip? No fog, clouds instead.
But we’ve got some luck. I jumped out of the car and was disappointed about the cloudy sky. Stefan was looking at the sky too and told me; watch, there is a small hole, maybe it gets bigger, let us try this and go for a hike.
So we did it and it cames better, not clear, but clear enough. And as you saw my image from yesterday with the light pollution and the bright full moon, watch this and see how many stars you can see in the sky, when it’s more dark than in our cities.

The milkyway in the vineyard

Posted on Januar 17th, 2014

Before I started nightly hiking in the mountains, I tested a lot in the flat land around my hometown. Although the light pollution is extreme high and the full moon was extreme bright, you can see the milkyway at the horizon. Because of the strong ultra wide angle lens and the angle upwards to the sky, is the horizon strongly cranked, but the sky is looking great.

A very clear sky in Glarus

Posted on Januar 15th, 2014

On my way up to the Klausenpass, were I came to late to make some starscapes, I took this poto. It is somewhere in Kanton Glarus I don’t no more know where this exactly was. It was very dark in the valley, so I couldn’t see what I was shooting. But the sky was so clear and you could see so many stars. On the left side at the crest you can see the last moon light.
In the sky you can see as the brightest point Jupiter. In the upper middle you see the Plejades and at the lower part of the sky you see the star constellations Orion and the Orion Nebula, even with a wide angle lens at 11mm.