The Wrong Mountain

In future, I think we'll stick to doing winter tours that we know from the summer. Yesterday The Wife and I embarked on a winter tour from one of the books I bought her for Christmas. It was supposed to take us up the 1542 m Reuterwanne above Jungholz, a small Austrian village that is accessible to Germany during the lockdown due to the fact that it exists as an enclave into Germany. Who knows what they were drinking when they drew up the borders after WWII?, but this is definitely a weird one.

From the Pfeiffenberg || Olympus 13 mm, f/8, 1/1000 s, ISO 200 

Instead we ended up on the 1458 m Pfeiffenberg because we followed the tracks in the snow. Although most of the valley snow has disappeared, it snowed again on Friday. With a cold but sunny forecast for Saturday we decided that it would be rude to sit at home doing nothing and decided to head out to the hills once more. We were treated to a day of two halves. Actually, to be more accurate, we had a foggy day with a sunny interlude because the fog rolled in again as we came down the mountain, giving us some really special images, but more of that later.

Frosty Trees || Olympus 34 mm, f/8, 1/1600 s, ISO 200

We set off from a surprisingly empty car park in Jungholz - whether people were intimidated by driving into Austria (😮), they'd been put off by the fog, or whether in March they'd simply had enough of the snow, there simply weren't that many people under way, which suited us just fine. Finding the first landmark on the tour was easy since it simply required us to follow the signposts to the Stubentalalpe. The book (and signs) had the path following up the hillside behind the hut to the Reuterwanne and so we blindly followed the tracks leading up the hillside. What we failed to see was where the path to the Reuterwanne diverged and so we found ourselves atop the wrong mountain with no discernible path to getting on the right one.

The Process

But never mind, because we came home with an SD card full of 'keepers' and memories of a lovely winter tour pretty much on our own. A keeper is a photo that I'll keep (duh!) and show either here, Instagram or on my private Facebook page. Not necessarily the best of the best, but good enough to air publicly. After years of photography, I have developed a clear sorting method for photos at the end of the day. I'll import the photos directly into ON1, applying my own private preset - a set of standard modifications that I use during RAW processing. Almost all of these are not actually applied, but available to be used at a single click rather than diving through various menus. During import, I also back the photos up to an external USB hard drive. This has actually saved my butt once recently too as I managed to delete a whole folder worth of photos from my laptop.

Keeper or Not? || Olympus 47 mm, f/8, 1/1000 s, ISO 400 

Once imported, I use the ***** system to indicate which photos I actually want to process with a single star. I'll then go through these one by one, applying the edits I think best enhance the photo to emphasise the aspect of the image that really caught my attention. The edits that I'm happy with I'll give two stars to. These are the images I end up exporting to jpg from ON1, most of which will end up being published somewhere. I tend not to be overly selective here. I have one friend who posts perhaps a couple of photos there a month and they're really top-notch images. I'm a bit more indiscriminate and tend to spray my images everywhere. The really good ones will get three stars, but that's perhaps a small handful of images in a month.

The Foggy Half

Photographing isn't necessarily the first thing you think about doing in fog - but the results can be amazing. I got a couple of really painterly images from yesterday's tour that couldn't have been taken in any other conditions.  This first one of the shed in the snow was actually the very first image I took of the day. This I might even classify as a three star image. Note that it thumbs its nose completely at the rule of thirds etc., but it works, for me at least. Great way to start the day

Lone Shed || Olympus 29 mm, f/6.3, 1/1000 s, ISO 400

As well as the fresh snow there was a wicked hoarfrost as we walked up out of the village due to the freezing fog. We tend to think of nature as a constant, what's there today will be there tomorrow, but these photos tell a different story. Even as I write this 24 h after taking the photos, I know that they were unique, unrepeatable snapshots in time. Never again will that shed scene look exactly like that. Never again will that branch have that constellation of ice crystals. The same is the case for images with powerful clouds. Sobering thoughts.

Ice Crystals || Olympus  100 mm, f/11, 1/160 s, ISO 400

I decreased the aperture to f/11 here to increase the depth of field on the crystals. F/8, my standard aperture for this lens, just wasn't doing it and I didn't want to stop down too much further as it would have reduced the shutter speed to a level where motion blur might start becoming an issue. A lot of photographers only talk about aperture as a means to control depth of field, but it's only one of three factors influencing how much of your scene will be in focus alongside focal length and focal distance (how long your lens is and how close you are to the subject respectively).

Once we reached the Stubentalalpe we were out in the brilliant blue skies of an early spring day - after all meteorological spring started last week and we continued enjoying that light until we came down again after lunch. There was fog below us and rolling over the tops every now and then, but by and large it was pure sunshine until we descended back to the hut.

Standing Out and Hidden || Olympus 20 mm, f/8, 1/250 s, ISO 200

Snaking our way back down the tarmac to Jungholz at the end of our tour we came across this group of trees across the road. At a first glance the images look black and white, but they're full colour as you can see if you look at the snow poles and trail sign. An interesting set of images that aren't quite my usual style, but I really like them and could imagine them looking good printed on wood.

The Sunny Half

Once we'd reached the Stubentalalpe it was blue skies all the way, giving rise to a different sort of monochrome - white and blue instead of black and white. The colour of the fir trees was essentially non-existent given the bright light. Normally I would have had my CPL polarising filter on in conditions like this, but because the scene was so bright anyway I decided not to use it as it would have made the skies even darker and I was looking for some brighter images.

At the Stubentalalpe || Olympus 21 mm, f/8, 1/2500 s, ISO 400

Arriving at the Pfeiffenberg we found this delightful little wooden cross. At this point we thought we were still on the right path - we weren't -  and could see the Reuterwanne but couldn't clearly see how to get to it. Again, a unique image. Never again will this particular snow pattern exist to be photographed.

Pfeffenberg || Olympus 66 mm, f/5.6, 1/4000 s, ISO 200 

This next image is a complete fake! The path ran through the snow to the left of the drift. Apart from looking ugly, I wanted to see how far I could take the image correction. There are a couple of blotches that I might be able to correct with a little more effort, but the resulting image is adequate without being a showstopper. This is about the limit of corrections that I'll apply to an image outside of focus or exposure bracketing. I won't do sky replacements, for example, not because it's wrong per se, but photography for me is about conveying the beauty of what I saw and experienced. There's an inherent authenticity involved. This is probably a step too far.

Drifts || Olympus 23 mm, f/4.5, 1/6400 s, ISO 200 

Coming off the top we descended into a mini winter wonderland of baby fir trees. You can clearly see the valley fog in this photo. The trail through the snow is the same one as the shot of the drifts, demonstrating the extent of the 'corrections' that were necessary.

Winter Wonderland ||  Olympus HR 12 mm, f/8, 1/1250 s, ISO 200

And I can't come away from a trip to the mountains without a photo of a tree stump!

The Stump || Olympus 31 mm, f/8, 1/1600 s, ISO 200

Descending further we came across a mini plateau with a series of deciduous trees that still had snow and/or hoarfrost on the branches giving rise to this fantastic vista - as well as providing a great spot for lunch. 

Ming Vase-Landscape ||  Olympus 12 mm, f/8, 1/1600 s, ISO 200

Sat opposite this vista for quite a while gave me plenty of opportunity to 'work the composition' as the profi's would put it, and I tried a number of approaches including two with some 'foreground interest', but as so often with these scenes for me, I found the best image to have been my first 'instinct' shot when I arrived at the scene. The others seem contrived somehow with the foreground detracting from the simplicity of the scene that this one conveys nicely rather than adding to it.

Long Pines ||  Olympus 75 mm, f/8, 1/1250 s, ISO 200

It was also nice light to catch a couple of rare up close shots of Sharon in her natural element - the mountains.

The Wife ||  Olympus 80 mm, f/7.1, 1/1000 s, ISO 200

Mahlzeit! ||  Olympus 12 mm, f/7.1, 1/2000 s, ISO 200

So that was our Saturday morning. What did you get up to, anything interesting?

HDR Edit in ON1 Photo Raw 2021

I thought it was time to do another edit run-through, in case anyone's interested in that sort of thing. I do 99% of my post-processing using an all-in-one editor called ON1 Photo Raw 2021, it's a great programme that covers a lot of the functionality of Lightroom and Photoshop in one package.

Blue Hour over the Allgäu last Saturday

Talking to friends, I have the impression that for a lot of photographers, post-processing is a book with seven seals and something that they'd rather not bother with. To be fair, a lot of cameras produce excellent quality jpegs, but what a lot of people don't realise is that a jpeg isn't an unprocessed image: It's an image that has been processed by your camera (or RAW editing software) using automated algorithms. 

So the question is - who do you want to edit your digital negative? your camera or other automated processing software, or yourself? If you're happy with the edit your camera/software has made, then there's not a lot of need for further editing. If, on the other hand, the jpeg out of camera doesn't meet your expectations, or more importantly (for me at least), if the final photo doesn't convey the emotion that you experienced in the field, the only solution is to get to grips with digital processing. That's deep isn't it? And that's the principle underlying most of my editing; I want to convey to the observer the emotion that I experienced when I took the photo. 

HDR Assembly

This photo is a high dynamic range (HDR) image. It has been assembled from three separate exposures taken one after the other; one exposed as normal, one for the dark parts of the scene and one for the bright parts of the scene. The camera has a much lower capacity for distinguishing between the brightest and darkest parts of an image for the human eye. Conservatively, my eye is 30x more sensitive to extremes of light and dark than my camera sensor is. To compensate for this, it's necessary to take multiple images and compact them together in order to arrive at a compelling image.

Base Exposure; 12 mm, f/8, 0.6 s, ISO 200

Dark: ibid with 1/13 s

Light: ibid with 5 s

Normally I would set the camera to expose two stops over and two under for 1/4 and 4x the brightness (one stop= one doubling or halving of the exposure). Here I elected to use a three stop bracket due to the extreme conditions. The three base images are nothing special, as you'll see here. The basic image is exposed for the sky, the darker image has more colour in the brighter sections of the sky and the lighter one for the valley foreground.

To create the HDR base image, you'll need to select the three images in ON1 Photo Raw Browse and then click the HDR button on the right. You'll now be confronted with a number of choices; Deghosting, Default Look and a bunch of sliders and options. 

Deghosting is all about how the programme processes compositional differences between the images, which will play a role if the shot was hand-held or if there are moving elements in the scene. Here neither is the case; the photo was shot from a tripod and there's nothing in the image that was moving sufficiently to cause problems over this distance and time-scale. The orange square reflects which image you've selected as the base image.

Selecting the base exposure and HDR algorithm

The next choice to make the Default Look. This dictates how ON1 processes your images into the final HDR picture. There are four options here; Natural and Surreal, both with and without Auto processing. Just for fun, I've tried all four options here below. The difference between Auto and native is that ON1 chooses how to set the basic level sliders for you. 

Natural	Natural Auto
Surreal	Surreal Auto

Because I want the image to reflect the darker mood of blue-hour, the dusk hour after sunset when there's still ambient light to see by, I've set the base image for the exposure using the iris icon in the left-hand image in the HDR window.

Effects and Local Edits

Once ON1 has generated a base image that you're happy with, it's off to the Develop module to do the actual editing. This is where the magic happens and where you can turn a good image into something special. Of course you've still got the option of just hitting AI Auto at this stage for ON1 to perform an automatic edit. If you really want to make the image sing, however, a little more finesse is involved.

Normally if I was editing an image, I would have applied one of a personal custom preset, applying a bunch of Effects and Local Edits to the image. Actually in my custom preset, most of these aren't actually applied, instead they're pre-loaded but not yet selected. This is a huge time- (and wrist-)saver, because it means that I don't have to click through a number of menus items to select the standard edits that I use on most photos. I apply this preset automatically at the import stage, but the output file from the HDR module strips the photos of all these filters.

I used the Natural Auto HDR as my base image as a starting point. Everyone has their own particular style. Mine tends toward the hyper-realistic feeling of Albert Dros or Fabio Antenore, two landscape photographers whose eye-catching Instagram images  really stuck out to me, but I don't take it quite as far as they do.

Having set the base image using the HDR sliders, it's down to some Effects and Local Adjustments:

1. Base Image

Here's the base image. I've cropped to a 2:3 format to cut out the immediate foreground.

 

2. Noise Reduction

I hate performing noise reduction. It's process I don't understand and usually involves me randomly sliding Luminance and Detail up and down until I arrive at a compromise I'm happy with. Unfortunately, cameras with small sensors are prone to noise grain. I normally avoid this by leaving the ISO at the native level. Even though I did that here, I seem to have picked up some noise in the sky. I've reached an unhappy compromise here with a Luminance of 40 and Detail 15.

3. Colo(u)r Enhancer: Increase Colo(u)r

Adds some colour saturation to the image, deepening the blue of the sky. I've applied it to the whole scene at 100% opacity except the yellower area of the sky because it became too dominant.

4. Tonal Enhancer: Highlights Darker

Darkens the sky somewhat, intensifying the colour even further. Applied to the sky with a gradient mask. There was no need to apply it to the foreground.

5. Tonal Enhancer: Tonal Contrast I

Adds a bit of sharpness to the scene. Applied using a large feathered brush at opacity 50% to the mountain area to restore some detail. 

6. Tonal Enhancer: Tonal Contrast II

I applied a second, more gentle tonal contrast filter as a gradient at 33% opacity to the bottom of the picture to give the trees a little more detail.

7. Split Tone

Using the split tone filter you can add different colours to both the highlights and the shadows of an image. Here I've used it as a diagonal gradient with the highlights unaltered (set to white) but the shadows given a purple tone. As you can see it subtly changes the darker blue tones into slightly purple ones. 

Note: the purple bottom-left was unintentional and removed in later photos.

8. Local Adjustment: Lighten

The foreground was looking just a little too dark for my taste, so I adjusted the Exposure to +0.6, Contrast to +20 and Saturation and Vibrance each to +15. Applied as a gradient to the bottom of the photo.

9. Local Adjustment: Reduce Highlights

The orange sky was still a little wan for my taste so I applied a radial gradient to the right-hand side of the photo in which I only pulled the Highlights down to -85. No Exposure adjustment, just the Highlights, it's a neat way of dealing with local Highlight (or Shadow) issues in a photo and here it just enhances the colour in the western sky towards the set sun.

10. Local Adjustment: Lighten

This last step is the salt in the soup and one I'm quite proud of: Instead of decreasing the highlights as one usually does, I selectively increase them - on the snow. Again, the exposure on this edit was left neutral and I just upped the Highlights by +40 and Midtones by +70. Then to rescue the snow a little bit out of the blue tone I increased the colour temperature by 5. This slider is incredibly sensitive at this level, but +5 really brings it enough towards white that it stands out.

Applying this brush wasn't easy and took me several attempts. In the end I opted for the ON1 AI Quick Mask, modified at the micro level along the ridge of the mountains and then removed from the immediate foreground. I love the way that you can set a gradient or mask in ON1 to tell the programme where to apply the effect that you want and then make micro adjustments to that mask to correct any mistakes.

Looking back up the series, the difference between steps is relatively subtle, so before I reveal the finished image, let's look again quickly at the starting point and then immediately on to the final photo for comparison:

Before

After: Blue Hour over the Allgäu

Anyway, that's the final edit (for now). Let me know below if you've found this helpful at all, or if you'd have done anything differently. Until then, stay safe and happy shooting.

Sunset From The 'High Ridge'

Matthias' message warning me that the forecast was set for sensational sunsets at the weekend reached me on Thursday evening. At the same time he informed me that he was waiting for confirmation that he hadn't been infected by a colleague and so we'd have to play it by ear. In the meantime: where to go to catch the spectacle? I immediately recalled a tour that we'd done as a family earlier in the year in the western Allgäu mountains and where we'd had an uninterrupted view towards the Säntis in the north-eastern corner of Switzerland.

Cloud Inversion over Lake Constance || Olympus 100 mm, f/8, 1/100 s, ISO 200 

Looking through our hiking book for the Allgäu, Sharon found a suitable looking tour just north of our previous jaunt, involving the summit of the Hochgrat. Looking it up online, I noticed that they had a cable car up to a few meters below the summit with a mountain restaurant and that they were advertising late opening due to the full-moon. Slowly a plan was forming in my mind involving an epic sunset shoot followed by some cool blue-hour photos by moonlight.

By Saturday morning, Matthias still hadn't received the all-clear, so we reluctantly decided that we would be better off going our separate ways this time - a decision that I don't think either of us regret given the images we were able to capture. Given the fact that we were planning a relatively late shoot, we weren't in a hurry to leave on Saturday morning. 

Into the Aubach Valley || Olympus 44 mm, f/8, 1/160 s, ISO 200

We'd planned to park well up the Aubach valley at the Alpe Scheidwang, but after having have to wait for a small herd of cows to be ushered down to their winter quarters (the Alpine 'Almabtrieb' tradition - usually quite a photogenic event) we drove up to the bottom of the toll road to find it closed for the winter already. This put 8 km (5 miles) onto both ends of the walk, but we weren't going to be put off so easily.

The Aubach valley is delightful and full of deciduous trees. Unfortunately we were a few weeks too late for the best colour ('peak fall'), but we were still treated to a few last silver birches glowing golden in the afternoon sun. The polarising filter really brought out the sky's colour, bringing the cirrus clouds drifting overhead into stark relief.

Golden Silver Birch || Olympus 12 mm, f/6.3, 1/125 s, ISO 200

The unexpected extra mileage meant that we didn't have much time to enjoy the valley, but there are a number of waterfalls left and right of the trail that would warrant a more leisurely investigation another time under the right conditions. The live ND function on the new Olympus makes shots like this child's play (if you can find them that it). The on-board computer can simulate a 5-stop light reduction.

Roadside Waterfall || Olympus 61 mm, f/8, 1 s, ISO 200

One of the Olympus features that caught my attention and caused me to opt for this system over say those of Fuji, Sony, Canon or Nikon was the image stabilisation - an exceedingly clever system that compensates the movement of the photographer and enables you to still get remarkably sharp photos. The shot above, for example, is a 1 s exposure. As a rule of thumb, without any stabilisation (unless you have a really steady hand) is that the shutter speed shouldn't exceed 1/focal length (e.g. 1/50 s for a 50 mm lens). Being able to take shots like this hand-held is a huge advantage. Add to that the brand new in-camera ND filter (neutral density - a darkened filter that is pure grey) and you've got a winner. The Olympus E-M1X had this and so does the new E-M1 Mk III, of which I have been a very happy owner for about a month now.

Climbing out of the valley towards the ridge and our destination - the 1834 m high Hochgrat - the snowy tops of the inner-Alpine peaks began to show themselves. The previous morning there had been snow even on the northern edge of the Alps and there were signs of fresh snow, but they quickly disappeared over the course of the day. As we climbed out of the valley and could peer over the edge we could see that the main Alps hadn't shed their white blanket so easily.

Peeking Over The Edge || Olympus

As we climbed towards the ridge, it wasn't only more mountains that we could see, but more people as well. There's a cable car that runs up to a point about 80 m below the summit starting near the town of Oberstaufen on the other side of the mountain to where we started from. Due to the full moon, the cable car was running until 21.00 and a lot of people were understandably making the most of the last Saturday before the renewed lockdown to tank up on fresh air.

Catching the Sunset

Despite the larg(ish) numbers of people, there was plenty of room on the summit to settle, grab a snack and wait for the ensuing spectacle. There wasn't as much high cloud as there had been the previous evening, but the remnants of cirrus clouds, particularly on the western horizon, gave us hope. Although I'd deliberately chosen a spot on the very edge of the summit and demonstrably got my tripod out and ready, it didn't stop another photographer from setting up between us and the sunset. To be fair, he probably hadn't noticed me - my tripod was out but not extended, but it still left me fuming at him (silently of course, I am British after all) and so I demonstrably set up just left of him as we waited for the show to start.

Waiting for Sunset || Credit: Sharon Page, Huawei p30 Pro

As well as the main view in front of us, the slowly setting sun was beginning to light up the bigger mountains of the Allgäu in a very alluring fashion. Taking panoramas like this I'm always torn between the bigger picture and detailed shots of individual mountains and larger panorama shots. I must have swapped between the 12-100 mm and 8-18 mm lenses half a dozen times as the evening progressed, depending on how the fancy took me.

Alps at Sunset || Olympus 38 mm, f/8, 1/500 s, ISO 200 

Hochvogel - Matterhorn of the Allgäu Mountains || Olympus 75 mm, f/8, 1/50 s, ISO 200

Then it was just a question of waiting. Exposing sunset photos is far from easy. Either you get a well-exposed foreground and a pale sky with a burnt-out spot where the sun should be, or a dark foreground and a brilliant sky. Working with a tripod it was relatively easy to take multiple exposures of each shot and put them together afterwards in ON1 Photo Raw. This is necessary because our cameras are not as good at resolving the range of bright to dark as the human eye is. Normally when I'm 'exposure bracketing', I'll set the camera to 1/4 and 4x the light (two stops under and two stops over), this time two stops wasn't going to do it and so I went to three (1/8 and 8x the light) and even then it was borderline shooting directly into the sun. 

Sunset with the Crowds || Olympus 18 mm, f/8, 1/100 s, ISO 200

Even with these precautions, the sun was almost too bright for the camera as it dipped behind the Säntis. 

Sunset over the Säntis || Olympus 100 mm, f/8, 1/125 s, ISO 200

Hardly Alone || Credit: Sharon Page

Always Wait for the Encore

About 18 years ago, the band Blackmore's Night was playing one of the local concert venues. The eponymous Richie Blackmore was the one-time lead guitarist of two of our favourite bands (you may have heard of them; Deep Purple and Rainbow 😉). The newer music style of Blackmore's Night is a bit twee and wasn't really worth hanging around for the encore for, so in order to beet the rush for the car-park (and keep the babysitter's fee to a sensible level) I suggested that we cut out early. We were just walking across the road when I heard the opening chords of "Difficult to Cure" - Rainbow's rock adaptation of Beethoven's 9th and one of my favourite tracks of theirs. The hairs immediately stood up on the back of my neck and we did a volte face and marched back into the courtyard to enjoy a great rendition of this rock classic. Why am I telling you this? Well the moral of the story is that as with concerts, when photographing sunsets, you should always wait for the encore. Once the sun dips below the horizon, it lights up the clouds from below leaving you with the classic breath-taking oranges, reds and purples - and yes, sometimes even deep purples.

Always Wait for the Encore || Olympus 25 mm, f/8, 1/50 s, ISO 200

Another good tip for photography in general is that you should always look over your shoulder for the unexpected scene. Despite wanting to get to the restaurant before the crowds did - we knew that we were going to be around for a while yet for the blue-hour - we spent a couple of minutes scouting the area for some last shots before setting off down the path to the top of the cable car to grab some well-deserved chow. I've had better food in the mountains, but sitting outside on the terrace of the restaurant I don't think I've had many better locations.

And Keep An Eye Over Your Shoulder || Olympus 75 mm, f/8, 1/50 s, ISO 200

Friends || Olympus 75 mm, f/8, 1/30 s, ISO 200

On to the Blue Hour

As we polished off our venison goulash on the terrace overlooking the valley, or Käsespätzle in Rhi's case, the lights started to come on, both in the valley and above us. I absolutely love blue hour photography. Since my stint in the Allgäu shooting the Milky Way back in June, I've become an ardent fan of this time of day. Every photographer has their favourite light. For some it's the hour before sunrise, when lakes are still mirrors and mist hangs in the valleys, for others it's the golden hour, that time just after sunrise or just before sunset when the light turns that gorgeous colour, illuminating subjects gently from the side. Mine is the evening blue hour, catching the sky as it turns pastel shades of yellow to purple. If I'm in the mountains, and even better, if there's fresh snow on the peaks, then I'm in heaven. I was in heaven:

Photographer's Delight || Olympus 12 mm, f/8, 0.6 s, ISO 200

Not only was the view to the south hotting up (above), the lights were beginning to show in the valley. Dusk photography is always fun - you invariably end up getting details on the photos that the native eye didn't spot. Although the eye has a greater dynamic range than the camera sensor, the sensor is more sensitive to low levels of light, especially if you keep the shutter open for a few seconds as here. I never noticed The Plough when I was taking this photo, but it's staring you in the face here.

The Plough over Oberstaufen || Olympus 10 mm, f/3.1, 30 s, ISO 200

But the sunset wasn't the only heavenly spectacle that the evening had prepared for us, we still had the full moon to go. It was low on the eastern horizon as we started off on our three hour trek back to the car. I tried a couple of shots, but couldn't get the focus properly - always a problem with low light photography. Yes, yes, I know the Mk III has the super-duper star AF mode, but in my rush I completely forgot about that, and wouldn't have known where to find it in the dark even if I had. On top of several expertly exposed shots that would have looked brilliant if I'd got the focus right, I managed to squeeze this last shot off my focusing on Mars. 

Allgäu by the Light of the Moon || Olympus 9 mm, f/3, 30 s, ISO 800

The moon was so bright that we didn't even need the head torches that we'd brought with us. The long yomp along the Aubach really dragged on the way back, leading Rhiannon (girl-child) to issue the warning "the photos better be worth it!". I'll leave you to be the judge.

Oh, and Matthias tested negative.