An alpine view

Posted on Mai 25th, 2015

Watch it all, from the Mythen across the Rigi and the lakes, to the central swiss alps.
While the sun is already gone down behind the horizon you can sill see her red light. And it’s already dark enough to see all the lights of the villages down in the valley.
Because this is the ending of the blue hour you can also see the first stars and you can see the two planets, Venus and Jupiter.
This is an HDR panorama image, which means I took five times a bracket  series to get all the dynamic I could also see by my eyes. My advice, if you ever go up to a sight seeing place like the Rotenfluh here, take your time and stay until it’s dark. Because after this pano I shoot also a night time pano with a lot more visible stars. The disadvantage is, after you took all the awesome photos and you are prepared to go down to the valley, you will notice that you missed the last funicular by far.

Star noise

Posted on Mai 3rd, 2015

Is there no moonlight and less light pollution, then you will see, how many stars are in the sky.
Unless the last pair of images I published, on this image you can see a very dark landscape. You may think, this landscape isn’t so dark at all, but watch the sky, compare it with my last images and see how many stars you can find on this image. The landscape is so bright, because I used the best gear I know for nightscape photography.
And now a bit technical information, this is a night HDR panorama image, boah! Yes it was veeery difficult to fix it together, that’s the reason, I published it one day later, it took me too long to fumble it together. First, it’s not possible to use an HDR software for a starry sky, you will get only dirty stripes. And then, 24mm was also not the best choice. Photoshop was not able to construct a pano, but with Kolor Autopano, which is now part of GoPro, was it possible to stitch it together. Also you have to fix all the manually parts, like the light trails of the car on the pass street, before you stitch it, because every stitch run will give you another, not compatible image to the other runs.

Blue hour over the Rigi

Posted on April 27th, 2015

After a hard climb up to the hill, you can enjoy the natures best.
When you are out in the nature and you reach a very impressive viewpoint, don’t go home before the sun sets. Go not even when the sun is gone, because the lightshow has already begun.
You can first enjoy the sun reaching the horizon and the shadows are getting longer and longer. Then the peaks become a reddish glow and if you are lucky there are some clouds and they will also light up with a deep red. Then you can see all the yellow lights from the cities deep below you while the landscape will cover with a deep blue color. Now you know, why the dusk is also called the blue hour.
But wait, don’t go home now. If you wait more longer then you will see not only the lights below you, you will also see more and more lights in the sky, the wonderful starry night has begun.

The sun disappears

Posted on April 23rd, 2015

Only for a short time is the sun visible, before she is hiding behind the mountains.
Now it’s no more far until I reach my destination and the sun is already nearly hidden. Always the same thing, I’m short in time and I need to hurry to see the sun on the top.
So I took not the path, instead I choose the direct way upwards over the ski slope. Well it was certainly faster but also much steeper. My snow shoes had a very good traction but I realized the steepness when I tried to breath and at the end I reached the top without a heart attack.
For the way down I choose the hiking path around the hill, because I learned my lesson, downwards is the traction of the snow shoes much worse and If you loose your traction, you will only stop until you reach the bottom of the hill…

Hiking weather in sight

Posted on April 21st, 2015

Before you get some dreamy alpine images, you have to hike to the photo spot.
It was a nice, warm spring day when I was walking to the Rotenfluh and I could still use the snow shoes. I like to walk with my snow shoes through the white mountain landscape.
Okay, I had the snow shows mount and unmount several times because not every part was still snow covert. But I was really pleased that I had my snow shoes with me. The snow was already wet and grainy and without my feet extensions I was always sliding on the ground. But what could be more nice as an awesome sunset in spring with green grass and snow together? Pure nature!

Night HDR

Posted on April 19th, 2015

A classical 3 images HDR shot with 2EV steps, but I did it during a moonless night.
Normally I can’t take a bracket series at night, because of the durage of the exposure time. But with the Sony A7s and the Samyang 24mm 1.4 I take the image with only 8s exposure time and this gave me possibility to take a 2EV bracket serie because +2EV is about 30s which is the maximum exposure time of all system cameras I know.
For the first time I could take a night image with only one click on the shutter button and the thing was eaten. If the nights will be more dark, when the snow is melting and 3200 ISO with f/2 is no more enough, I can use the huge reserve of this body and go up to 12800 ISO or use one stop more at the aperture. The only thing you can’t change is the maximum of 8s exposure time, if you still want to have stars instead of stripes.
Btw, the light you can see on the floor and at the mountains and at the clouds, came from the cities down at the valley.

Star gazing

Posted on April 16th, 2015

Last night I was for a short evening trip on the peak.
Just decided, because of the clear weather, I was for a few hours on a night tour. This time I visited the Rotenfluh near the Mythen, the mountain behind me. I drove to the Ibergeregg and walked about an hour to this viewing point. Good I had my snow shoes with me, there was still snow covering the ground and the snow was very slippery, but with my snow shoes I walked easily a steep red ski slope upwards. Okay easy with the traction but I had always be careful not to step on my tongue.
Anyway, I spend a few hours on the top with a spectacular starry sky and a good view to the near mountains. But for the moment is this the only image I processed to see what you can expect