The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men

So I've been playing about a bit with PhotoPills recently, a really geeky photographer's planning App. There's a steep learning curve, but once you've got the gist of it, it's really quite useful, particularly for sun/moon-set/rise shots and astrophotograpy. I'm not a huge fan of shooting the full moon - it can be a bit bland because the crater shadows are so short (like shooting terrestrially at noon), but if the moon is positioned well, it can still give usable results.

Full Moon and Kloster Andechs | Olympus 400 mm, f/6.3. 1/2 s ± 2 stops, ISO 400

Back in June I already tried shooting the full moon rising behind Kloster Andechs, a local landmark. Unfortunately I got my planning slightly off, meaning that the moon was much further south of the monastery than I'd envisioned, it was a day past full moon due to cloud cover the night before and despite having clear skies at home, there was a cloud bank low on the horizon to the east, obscuring the view and it was quite dark.

Obscured by Clouds | Olympus 123 mm, f/5.7. 60 s, ISO 400

Back home I went over the PhotoPills planning again and found out what my problem was. There are a number of variables that have to be entered; position of the subject, position of the photographer, time, etc. The App determines the distance between the two as well as the elevation distance and you can then select the precise time at which the moon will be at the correct elevation and work out the optimal place to stand in order to fine-tune the position to shoot from. It turned out that I'd taken the elevation into account and then used the wrong line in the map - the one 

Come July and the full moon fell on a Friday again, always good for a late shoot, plus moonrise was 8 minutes after sunset, meaning that there would still be a significant amount of ambient light to shoot with; it wouldn't just be a bright moon against a dark background (🥱). Back in PhotoPills I realised that I'd forgotten all the steps necessary to plan the shoot, so it was back to their helpful YouTube tutorial for a quick refresher.

Subject to be photographed Standpoint to shoot from Second panel of Planner Altitude difference standpoint ⇾ subject Dial in Moon height using time slider (8) Line indicating direction of moonrise Line indicating direction of moon at selected time Time slider (magnified view). Slide the time slider back and forth to give the correct elevation to match the altitude difference (4) and then reposition the standpoint pin (2) to position the moon direction line (7). Simples!

Getting into position about a half-hour ahead of time we discovered that the place on the lake shore that we'd worked out in the App was obscured by 2 m high reeds and so we backtracked 150 m north to just outside the Wasserwacht by the Pavillion at Utting. Waiting for the moon to appear we scanned around us for other motives. The sky colours were getting really pretty and pastelly at this stage and so I whipped out the smartphone for this grab. Actually one of my favourite of the evening in the end.

Pastel Tones | Huawei P30 Pro Smartphone

Moonrise came and went and we didn't see anything. Check the App. Oh yes, we have to wait for it to rise sufficiently to be seen behind the 173 m higher horizon to the east. I'd figured that into the planning, but I'd been looking at the moonrise time rather then the time that I'd dialled into PhotoPills. Bang on 21:33 we saw a red-pink glow on the horizon north of the monastery. Our move to a clearer spot had pushed the moon further north than I'd hoped for.

Ah, There She Is! | Olympus 150 mm, f/5.7. 1/3 s, ISO 400 

Starting with the moon 'upstream' of the monastery was much better than downstream, however, since it could only move into constellation and not out of to start with. It was now a waiting game, waiting for the moon to come into a good position, adjusting the tripod position every now and then to make sure the reflection of the moon's light was unobstructed - it would have been messy to have it interrupted by the boats or jetty at this stage. Avoiding this meant repositioning the tripod every five minutes or so.

Moon and Andechs | Olympus 138 mm, f/5.7. 1/2 s, ISO 400

With  as spectacle like this, we weren't the only 'togs out of course. Not sure whether this chap was a planner or an opportunist staying at the local campsite. I always go out of my way and exchange a few friendly words with anyone out shooting. I seem to get two types of reaction; folks are either really ultra friendly and chatty or they give the impression that you're treading on their toes, poaching their photos. It isn't a competition and generally we can only learn from each other. I'm always happy to promote other's photos on social media too if I see merit that deserves sharing. We need to be building each other up, not tearing each other down.

Photographer's Paradise | Olympus 169 mm, f/5.8. 0.8 s ± 2 stops, ISO 400

As we watched the moon rise, we could see the transition in colour from red to orange to yellow. Just like the sun, the more atmosphere the light reflecting from the sun has to travel through, the redder it appears as the shorter wavelengths of light get bounced off into space. Now we could zoom in with the Olympus f/5.6 100-400 to catch a couple of full frame images. Believe it or not, I've toned down the saturation of the moon here as it looked simply too artificial.

Moon and Andechs: Exposure Blend | Olympus 400 mm, f/6.3. 0.8 s ± 2 stops, ISO 400

As the distance between moon and monastery increased, so the size of the two elements in the picture as I had to zoom out as well as the contrast in brightness as dusk slowly arrived. Our work here was done. Almost. Sharon actually spotted this composition of the light playing on the water next to the jetty. And with that we were done.

Moonglow Reflected | Olympus 400 mm, f/6.3. 1 s, ISO 400

Do you have a subject that you'd like to shoot at full moon some time? Want some help planning exactly when and where to stand to take that shot instead of using trial and error? Drop me a line and we'll see if we can set you up.

My Latest Muse - It's Serious!

Hi folks, I know it's been a while - no posts for the whole of June 😲. I have been busy shooting, honest, but not much worth blogging about. Plenty of photos, but few words to go with them. I do have a new muse though. It's alright, Sharon knows about her. In fact she didn't even mind me creeping into bed at 2 am Saturday morning having spent the entire evening with her. It's a place, not a person and I've lived a 35 min drive away for the last 18 years and only just got round to visiting.

Science and Faith in Tension || Olympus 12 mm, f/9, 1/25 s, ISO 200, 14 shot pano 

The place in question is, unusually for me, a flat piece of ground, albeit within spitting distance of the mountains. What makes it special is the buildings - it's a satellite communication centre, an arable area spotted with massive 32 m diameter parabolic antennae. What makes this place special though is that it's also home to a beautiful little 600-year old Bavarian chapel; St. Johannes d. Täufer (St. John the Baptist). The whole site is so delightfully incongruous, firstly with the massive satellite dishes set in amongst the farm fields and then with the combination of the dishes and the ancient tiny church. Add a backdrop of the Alps - you're pretty much looking directly at the Zugspitze, Germany's highest mountain and I feel like the whole thing is a microcosm (or is that macrocosm) of my life - science, church, mountains.

Satellite Centre Raisting || Olympus 44 mm, f/8, 1/400 s, ISO 200 

Despite the 'incongruousnous' of the place, it works, there's tension between the elements, but there's also harmony. Visually, the tiny chapel easily holds its weight against the dozens of satellite dishes. This feels like my life to a certain extent, I live in multiple communities; my work community is very science laden with friends who are sceptical about people of faith, some parts of my faith community, my church, are wary about too much science, other communities I belong to are salt of the earth Bavarians where I live or people who share our love for the mountains. Here in Raisting it all comes together.

St. Johann d. Täufer, Raisting || Olympus 100 mm, f/8, 1/250 s, ISO 200

I've been down here three times in the meantime and I don't plan on stopping any time soon. The first time was to try an astro-shoot, the second after a massive rain storm came through and the third to try to catch the blue hour and some more astro shots. Given the right conditions, shooting the Milky Way here could be quite interesting. The trouble is, the dishes are quite well lit at night, obliterating any long exposures for the foreground. Add to that that both times I've been to shoot the stars there have been residual clouds reflecting light from the surrounding villages and you get a frustrating constellation (no pun intended, honest). The night sky is really dark and getting the best out of it requires long exposures to collect as much light as possible. If you've got wisps of cloud, even if they're not visible to the human eye, they catch the light being cast up from the villages below and as you'll see at the bottom of this post, it gives the night sky an ugly orange cast.

Stormclouds at Sunset || Olympus 8 mm, f/5.6, 1/25 s, ISO 200

I'm not going to show any photos from the first trip, they're just not worth it. I arrived late, set up where I thought there might be a nice view and shot into glaring spotlights all evening. The second time was quite special though. I went down with the whole family on the tail of a June thunderstorm. After eating at the delightfully Bavarian Gasthaus Drexl, we emerged to see the setting sun firing up the stormclouds that were slowly disappearing eastwards. What we hadn't expected were all the storks we saw. Sharon had glanced up as we left the Gasthaus and initially thought some silly bugger had posted a plastic bird on a scrappy nest atop their chimney, but then it moved and then we saw the chicks. Over the course of the evening we must have seen a dozen or so of the birds out in the fields, presumably looking for frogs and mice to bring back to their young.

Stork Parent || Olympus 100 mm, f/6.3, 1/800 s, ISO 200

The parabola dishes catch the evening light very satisfyingly, their structure catching the golden rays and reflecting them back. Some of the installations almost look like families with mum and dad towering over a clutch of infants.

Mum, Dad & The Kids || Olympus 29 mm, f/8, 1/60 s, ISO 200

The dishes are also thankful subjects for a monochrome treatment of the images. Here the combination of textures and tones screamed for a monochrome conversion. I pulled out the whites and blacks to make sure the image covered the whole gamut of black to white, added some dramatic contrast to the already moody clouds and sharpened the photo a little to arrive at this hangable composition.

Satellites and Storm || Olympus 13 mm, f/5.6, 1/80 s, ISO 200

My third trip was after a week of rainy storms had formed an impromptu lake in the middle of the fields allowing me to capture this reflection of the dishes dwarfed by an ancient oak tree. Getting low to the water let me catch some of the antennae with the mountains behind.

Satellite Reflections || Olympus 28 mm, f/6.3, 1/800 s, ISO 200

This time I was meeting up with a fellow photographer from Munich. Without him I would never have stepped behind the ancient chapel, but I'm so glad that I did just after the sun had set. Catching the colour of the last rays through the church windows together with the silhouette of the southwesternmost dish was a great start to the night.

Faith and Science at the Blue Hour || Olympus 8 mm, f/5.6, 1/5 s, ISO 200 

One of the nocturnal summer phenomena that I've only recently become aware of, thanks in part to Alyn Wallace's informative "What's in the Night Sky" YouTube series, is that of noctilucent clouds. They can be seen throughout the summer night, mostly to the north as these high altitude ice clouds catch the last of the sunlight. According to Wikipedia, these are normally only visible from about 50° latitude, meaning that they can be seen from the very northern tip of Bavaria. We seem to have had some luck in recent weeks and I've seen several photos of them in and around Munich and saw them myself when trying to catch the moon rising behind Andechs monastery a week previously. Being so far south I could only just see them dancing on the northern horizon, but they're definitely NLCs!

Noctilucent Clouds at Raisting|| Olympus 8 mm, f/2.8, 5 s, ISO 200

Having said that this next and last photo would never see the light of day, I am actually going to post it here. For one it highlights (sic) the problems of astrophotography in areas with urban light pollution, even when it's as sparsely populated as the area south of Dießen. Even the slightest amount of cloud catches the street lights and reflects their garing orange glow back to the camera as you can see here. But the reason I decided to share this image is the excitement that it gives me. This is a 3 min exposure at ISO 800 and not only can you see the beautiful textures of the galactic core, but also star colour is becoming visual. This is a quantum leap forward in my astrophotography, made possible by my Move Shoot Move star tracker, a device that sits between the tripod and camera and, when pointed at Polaris, rotates the camera at the same speed as the earth. Without it, my maximum exposure time is 25 s before the stars start to become streaks. With it I've been able to capture up to 8 min exposures with the stars remaining pin sharp. This allows me to lower the ISO and increase the colour information captured on the sensor. The downside is that, as you can see, with the camera moving even this slowly, any ground becomes blurred. Normally this would be overcome by taking a second similar exposure with the tracker turned off, but I had some technical issues with the untracked images and so this is about as good as it gets under the circumstances.

Milky Way Core || Olympus 8 mm, f/2.8, 3 min, ISO 800

This is definitely not the last you'll be seeing of the Erdfunkstelle Raisting from me; there's a lot more motherlode to be mined here. Watch this space!

Twenty-Four Hours in the Mountains

New moon is upon us once more and I was itching to get out and test not only my E-M1 Mk III that I bought after the but also Move Shoot Move star tracker that would let me break the 25 s exposure limit that I was experiencing with my present set up.

Mittenwald and the Karwendel || 6-shot panorama, Olympus 8 mm, f/5.6, 1/500 s, ISO 200 

It's been a while since I was this keyed up for a trip of any sort and by Friday evening I must have had packed and unpacked my gear around 4 times already. Saturday morning and my rucksack was feeling suspiciously light. Huh? Oh yes, the all important camera gear bag. Phew.

It had been a couple of weeks since we'd had a leg-stretch and so Sharon and I set off for Garmisch after a comfortable breakfast on Saturday morning to hike up to the Hausberg. It had been raining on and off for the previous few days in Kaltenberg, but in the mountains it had been snowing. In the first light of sun, the tops were shining pristine and I was really excited about the night to come and the images we would hopefully be able to make. After last year's successes in the Allgäu I have absolutely fallen in love with taking photos in the mountains in early summer as the sun goes down. The snow fields radiate in the late evening light both before and after the sun goes down and I was trigger happy after a few weeks out of the field.

Wetterstein || Olympus 100 mm, f/8, 1/640 s, ISO 200 

The hike up the Hausberg afforded us occasional glimpses of the surrounding snow peaks but no real photo opportunities beyond the occasional spring flowers and a friendly squorrel. The saving grace of the tour was Weißbier and Wurst at the kiosk at the Bayernhaus. It's been too long! 

Alpspitz through the Trees || Olympus 57 mm, f/8, 1/500 s, ISO 200

Forest Foliage || Olympus 100 mm, f/8, 1/640 s, ISO 200

Friendly Squorrel || Olympus 100 mm, f/5.6, 1/160 s, ISO 200

We were at the Mittenwald car park 10 min after Matthias arrived - not bad considering the different journeys we'd had. Sharon then returned home complete with my woolly hat and thermos flask of hot tea (entirely my fault) whilst Matthias and I headed up the Kranzberg via the delightfully situated Korbinian Hütte. Although my shoulders were aching like heck at this point due to all the photographic gear and warm clothing I was carrying in my ancient Deuter rucksack, our spirits were still high at this stage as the clear skies looked set to last.

Korbinian Hütte and Karwendel Spitze  || Olympus 20 mm, f/5.6, 1/800 s, ISO 200

Unfortunately this wasn't the case and we arrived at the summit only to find clouds rolling in from the west. Although this might be fun for the sunset, it was not what we were looking for for the night. We used the time to set up the tripods and snap a few evening shots as well as taking a blue hour panorama of Mittenwald and the Karwendel that would later serve as foreground for the starry landscapes. We waited for the lights in the town to come out for this; a darkened-down shot of a light-less town would not look right and if we left it too late then the difference between the bright lights and the dark mountains would have been too much, plus the exposure would take several minutes at low ISO, time that we'd rather invest in the sky. The combination of sky and ground has to look natural for the photo to work.

Blue-Hour over Mittenwald || 6-shot panorama, Olympus 8 mm, f/8, 2 s, ISO 200

Now it was just a question of waiting for the clouds to go and the stars to come out. Olympus cameras have a built-in intervalometer and can automatically generate time-lapse videos from the shots. Here's my offering from the evening's shenanigans. I'd hoped to catch one of the Milky Way rising over the mountains as well, but failed in that undertaking. 

Video ©️ Mike Page and Rhage Designs

There were plenty of vistas to occupy us while we waited; the Kranzberg boasts a 360° view of the Karwendel and Wetterstein mountains and we must have been able to see at least 50 or more summits of the surrounding mountains. We left the tripods where they were; they were important markers for taking the later shots, and one was recording a time lapse. There was enough light left not to need them with the Olympus cameras anyway. What they lack in noise levels when you jack the ISO up they make up for in spades with out-of-this-world image stabilisation.

Solitary Pine || Olympus 86 mm, f/5.6, 1/200 s, ISO 200

Skeletal Birch || Olympus 80 mm, f/5.6, 1/6 s, ISO 200

Kranzberg Gipfelhaus || Olympus 15 mm, f/5.6, 1/1000 s, ISO 200

Austrian Karwendel || Olympus 50 mm, f/5.6, 1/250 s, ISO 200

Wettersteinspitze || Olympus 20 mm, f/5.6, 1/100 s, ISO 200

Sunset Silhouette || Olympus 100 mm, f/5.6, 1/400 s, ISO 400 

Unfortunately the clouds were teasingly reluctant. Although we could see a clear horizon to the west where the prevailing wind was coming from, the more it blew the more clouds seemed to appear. And Mittenwald is bright at night. Around midnight we began to see more and more stars appearing overhead, but the wind was increasing, the temperature decreasing and there were still bands of cloud over Munich, Mittenwald and Innsbruck that were robbing us of the darkness that you need for really good pictures of the Milky Way. I'd had high hopes of some cool blue-hour photos of the first stars over the Karwendel mountain range. They didn't manifest either.

Best of a Poor Sky || 2x6-Shot panorama, Olympus 8 mm, f/8/2.8, 1/640/25 s, ISO 200/3200

In the end I gave up around 12:30, giving it up as a bad job and retreating to the log cabin on top of the Kranzberg to shiver the night away on a hard wooden bench. Matthias stuck it out in the wind-shadow of the cabin and actually got a half-way decent shot of the arch of the Milky Way over the mountains during a 10 minute interval in the clouds, the composition that I'd been after. But even then, the galactic core wasn't popping the way it can sometimes and so I didn't berate myself for not having stuck it out. I was missing a vital bit of kit for getting a solid panorama anyway and I just wasn't feeling it after my hike during the day as well.

My sleep was interrupted around 4:00 am by a couple of revellers from the valley, who for some bizarre reason decided that the top of the Kranzberg was the ideal place to smoke some whacky baccy and sing badly to German rap blaring out of a ghetto blaster. They blinded Matthias' acquired night vision with a blast from their torch and generally annoyed us for 15-30 min before deciding that shorts and a hoody were insufficient protection from the elements and buggered off whence they had come. Good riddance.

We were up at 5:00 to catch a glimpse of first light. Of course all the interesting clouds had gone by this stage and all we were left with was that typical narrow but intense band of colour low on the horizon as the sun made its welcome face known.

Mountain Dawn || 3-Shot HDR Olympus 8 mm, f/5.6, 1/10 s, ISO 200

Pretty in Pink || Olympus 18 mm, f/5.6, 1/15 s, ISO 200

Matthias had one surprise composition left before we headed down to the car and home, an alpine meadow complete with wooden hay barn in front of the Wettersteinspitze. Another tricky exposure that I've had to exposure blend to make the barn visible against the bright snowy mountain.

Alm Landscape Underneath the Wetterstein || Exposure Blend Olympus 18 mm, f/8, 1/50 s, ISO 200

90 minutes later, after having been standing in the same clothes for 24 h we were back home in blazing sunshine. 

So was it worth it given the disappointing astro' conditions? Every trip like this I learn something. I don't always come away with the shots that I wanted. Sometimes (often) I come away with bonus images that I hadn't expected or even contemplated. So yes, I'm a better - or at least more experienced - photographer than I was this time last week and next time I'll be in a better position to get that shot.

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.