A last view

Posted on Juli 18th, 2015

With this image we say goodbye to the Val Bondasca.
It was an exhausting weekend, but with many interesting views and photos. I wish there were less clouds especially in the night where I couldn’t see any stars but I liked the journey anyway.
I write this text while I’m very tired. I was coming back in the morning at six o’clock after a long night of making starscapes. In fact this is also the reason for the few posts in the last three weeks. We had such a stable weather situation, I had to go as often as possible for night shootings into the mountains. But the good thing is, now you can expect many new starscape photos in the next few weeks.

And the torture goes on

Posted on Juli 13th, 2015

After we reached the hut we realised, the distance to the peaks was to short.
What to do? There is only one solution, get distance to the peaks. And there is only one direction, to the northern ridge. The silly thing is, there is no trail, there are only stones.
And so we tried to climb up as far as we can. It was dangerous and exhausting. These stones are not the same one like you know from the trails. No, they were huge, up to three meters high and we had to climb from stone to stone. Only one false step and… don’t think about it…
After another 400 meters altitude we stopped before we reached the ridge. We needed to much time to climb up. But look at the wonderful peaks which we now can see. And do you see all the stones below us, they looks like the gravel on a parkfield but they aren’t. And if you look very close, then you can see, near the bottom border in the center of the image, the bright roof of the hut.
You can also see the glacier on the other site of the valley and the huge stone avalanche. The brighter part on the mountain above the avalanche, is the abortion point.

Finally there

Posted on Juli 11th, 2015

After a long way up through the valley, I’m up in the hut of Sciora.
The march was longer as I thought and it cost more energy than expected. But at the end, we reached the destination and I could take the welcome flowers for an image.
The mighty walls of the high mountains surrounded us and the only view was back from where we came from. And so we decided to climb up over a stony terrain to a gap between the peaks.
But this is another story you can read the next time…

The end is near

Posted on Juli 7th, 2015

Can you see it? The hut in the center of the image?
What a beautiful view, to see the destination of the journey. Although it is still far away but I know I can probably reach the hut.
Unfortunately the clouds hung thick at the impressiv peaks, so you can’t see it. But I still hope the weather will get clearer and I can take some photos of this very cool mountains. We will see it, but first I have to reach the hut, step by step…

And it goes on

Posted on Juli 5th, 2015

After the first steep climb, we could see where we came from.
Until we reached this place, I was several times slipped on my tongue. But this won’t happen anymore, I put it now over my shoulder.
However, look at this view, isn’t it beautiful? And the clouds are lighten up, unfortunately were the clouds back a few moments later.
Howsoever I have to go for the next part on the trail, but first I need some breath out of my oxygen bottle…

The end of the silence

Posted on Juli 3rd, 2015

After a long time of silence a new sign of life.
It was a hard week, because the weather was so stable, I had to go on several photo trips this week. It was really not possible to resist.
Therefore back to the tour in Val Bondasca. Although there was not much color in the sky, there was in favor more color on the ground. The alpine roses were everywhere along our way.
So we have here a classical RGB image

Over hill and dale

Posted on Juni 28th, 2015

The way is steep and arduous.
Short after the start, was the trail already steep and stony and it was getting worse. The mountains are always far away, regardless how long I was already walking. The weather was not good for nightly shots, because of all the clouds. But at this point I was happy the air was cold and windy.
Far away in the background, you can see the needle of the Ago di Sciora. In th foreground you see the mark for the hiking trail, yes I’m on the trail now. It was more climbing between large stones than hiking. But now back at home, like always, I want to go for the next trip

Val Bondasca

Posted on Juni 26th, 2015

A long way to go until I reached the destination.
As we started to drive to one of the farest point we can reach from here in the flatlands, was it still raining. It was faster to drive over Italy to reach this valley in the south of Switzerland.
After I saw this view, I thought how is it even possible to reach the hut of Sciora. This mountains are so high, the valley is so narrow and the walls are so steep.
Take a closer look, then you can see, at the far end of the valley, a gray band, like an autobahn. This is a massiv rockfall of a few million cubic meter of stones, fallen down from the Piz Cengalo. And if you look more closer, then you see some green behind the rockfall. And at the point, where the green is finishing, directly at the left border of the valley, there, in the steep wall, is the hut of Sciora, where we spent the night.
At this point I thought, hell why are we doing this…

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.