Tag: Mountains

A walk with my phone

Backlit mountain forest captured on a walk with my phone

Yesterday afternoon, The Significant Other and I went for a walk up the mountain behind the house we’re staying. Sure enough an opportunity to capture some of the surrounding beauty on a sensor. As “real” camera I brought the Nikon Zf plus some primes. And then there are the two iPhone cameras in my office phone (iPhone 16 Pro Max) and my personal device (iPhone 14 Pro). The camera I grabbed for our walk was the technically “weakest”, the iPhone 14 Pro.

Photography literally means “drawing with light”. There is no reference about technology in this. While having a capable device to capture light on a sensor (or film) certainly is a prerequisite, it is not the key component for taking good photographs. In fact, some of the world’s greatest images have been captured with technology that was far inferior to what we can use today. Photography is more about the eye, the creativity in our minds than technology. Taking landscape images, it is about light, contrast, color, shapes, textures and composition. And this for me is the fun when out and about, doing my “visual push ups”. So come along for a walk with my phone…..

Continue reading “A walk with my phone” →
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Lungau Landscapes with the Fuji

Sonnenuntergang an den Niederen Tauern
1/210 sec | f/5.6 | ISO 200 | 18mm

With the skiing slopes much too crowded, The Significant Other and I are doing a bit of winter hiking through Austria’s Lungau region between Mauterndorf and Mariapfarr. Along came the Fuji X-T2 with the Fujinon XF18-135mm F3.5-5.6 R LM OIS WR travel zoom. The color photographs in this post are all jpgs out of the camera with the Fuji Velvia film simulation, the monochrome jpgs were shot with the Acros B&W analogue simulation. To see more Lungau landscapes with the Fuji, click below…

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The Top of the World

Mount Everest from EBC
Mount Everest (8848m)

I wanted to do this post for quite some time now, but decided to save it for the last day of 2023. Because it means a lot to me. As a proud dad! Not that I didn’t embark on some nice trips myself this year: Seville and Dubai with The Significant Other. New York City together with Big Boy. But the families undisputed travel queen of 2023 is Big Girl. Because back in October she went to see the top of the world. No, she didn’t climb Mount Everest. But, fulfilling a dream, she went on an epic Three-High-Passes-Trek to the Everest Base Camp. Continue after the jump to see more of her trip of a lifetime to beautiful Nepal…

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Goodbye 2021

Lonka Valley
1/500 sec | f/9.5 | ISO 200 | 50mm

The last day of the year is upon us. Goodbye 2021! The Significant Other, Big Girl, two dear friends and myself spent the day hiking in the Austrian Alps in the Weißpriach Valley along the Lonka River. Enjoying a marvelous day. Walking along the mountain river has something cleansing to it. Washing 2021 away, looking forward to a brighter new year.

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The Long and Winding Road

1/400 sec | f/10 | ISO 200 | 29mm

Once in a while I like to name a post after a song title. Like in this case: “The Long and Winding Road” by the Beatles. If you don’t know it, check it out, a truly magic song. I was inspired by watching the movie “Yesterday” the other night, the story of a successless songwriter who, after a global power outage”, discovers he is the only person left on earth who remembers the Beatles and now makes a career of playing their songs as his own. And I happened to take a fitting image during one of recent mountain hikes.

Continue reading “The Long and Winding Road” →
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Happy Life

Monochrome alpine milk cow
1/180sec | f/11 | ISO 200 | 35mm

We’ve been living a happy life these past two weeks, as The Significant Other and I had managed to escape into the Austrian Mountains for a dearly needed break from our daily routine and Covid-19.

Continue reading “Happy Life” →
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Good friends are like stars

Starry Night
20 sec | f/2.8 | ISO 3200 | 7mm

“Good friends are like stars, you don’t always see them, but you know they’re always there”, an old saying goes.

A Milky Way shot to open the photography year 2020. Taken with the Olympus OM-D E-M1 and the mZuiko 7-14mm F/2.8. Image specs 20 sec (camera on a tripod) @ f/2.8 , ISO 3200 and 7mm focal length.

Postprocessing of the RAW in Lightroom Classic – mainly using haze reduction and increasing clarity in parts of the Milky Way, plus some overall sharpness masking and noise reduction.

Wish you a great Thursday!

Marcus

Related Posts:

Namibia Starry Night (and how I photographed it)

The Way Home

Accidental X-Ray

Ski the Volcano

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PNW Explored – Mt. Rainier National Park

Mt. Rainier | 1/200 sec - f/14 - ISO 200 - 14mm
Mt. Rainier from Sunrise Road | 1/200 sec – f/14 – ISO 200 – 14mm

Continuing with our explorations of the Pacific Northwest, we left Seattle early in the morning for a day trip to Mt. Rainier National Park, which is a good two and a half hour drive via Enumclaw and Greenwater. Famous American conservationist John Muir once said: “Of all the fire mountains which like beacons, once blazed along the Pacific Coast, Mount Rainier is the noblest.” For more photos of the majestic stratovolcano and the surrounding National Park, continue after the jump… Continue reading “PNW Explored – Mt. Rainier National Park” →

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Alpine Dreams

Alpine Caribbean | Switzerland | 2018
Alpine Caribbean | Switzerland | 2018  | 1/200 sec @ f/9 and ISO 200

I’m back in the corporate rat race after a great weekend in Switzerland. After I finally made it to Zurich on Friday night to reach my family, we did spent an awesome weekend with friends, doing a great trip into the mountains on Saturday and for some well deserved chilling on Sunday. For more photographs and some location infos of this Caribbean like mountain lake as well as a peek into the “Little Swiss Grand Canyon” continue after the jump… Continue reading “Alpine Dreams” →

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The Hood and the Moon

Supermoon | Oregon | 2018
Supermoon | Oregon | 2018

While driving back to Portland yesterday evening on Interstate 5 I noticed the Supermoon rising behind Mount Hood as I was already approaching the Columbia River. This was a too awesome opportunity to pass up. I took the next exit and drove just a quarter mile up a road to where I had the first unobstructed view of the big volcano.

Shot with the Olympus OM-D E-M1 with the mZuiko 12-100 mm F/4. Image specs are 1/320 sec @f/5 and ISO 200, at 100mm focal length, the far end of the zoom. I promise this is no Photoshop, it really was like this. I only slightly increased clarity when RAW processing in Lightroom Classic CC.

For more about this majestic mountain see the links to earlier posts about “The Hood” below

Wish you a great Tuesday

Marcus

Related Posts:

The Hood and the Flowers

Monday Mountains (5)

Around the World in 12 Days – Hiking on Mount Hood

Ski the Volcano

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Good Friday

Mystic Mountain
Mystic Mountain | Lungau | 2018

The Friday preceding Easter Sunday is Good Friday,  a Christian holiday commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and his death at Calvary. It is also known as Holy Friday, Great Friday, and Black Friday. 

We are spending Easter at a very good friend’s house in the Lungau region in the Austrian Alps. Not really the place for Street Photography, but the opportunity to capture some monochrome landscapes.

The weather was not all that great, rather fitting for the subdued mood of Good Friday. While the kids took to the slopes, the Significant Other and I hiked up the Weißpriachtal along the Longa River. Readers of this blog might remember my post about High Contrast Landscape Photography, where I took some Ansel Adams like images on a sunny December day in the very same valley during an earlier visit.

Today there were only low hanging clouds, nothing spectacular to photograph, so we just enjoyed the hike. Only when returning, I took my Olympus OM-D E-M1 with the 12-100mm F/4 Pro Zoom out of my backpack and shot a few detail shots of what nature gave me. Kind of zen-like. Probably nothing anyone apart from me would look at, but really satisfying me as a visual artist. I will share these images tomorrow.

My photo of the day was that of the mountain above us, in a brief moment when the clouds opened up and gave us a vista of a moody mountainscape. Perfect for a Good Friday.

Image specs are 1/640 sec @ f/7.1 and ISO 200, focal length 100mm (equals 200mm full frame equivalent).

Wish you all a great start into a hopefully splendid Easter weekend!

Marcus

Related Posts:

High Contrast Landscape Photography

Fogged In

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Abandoned or Alone

Some thoughts on monochrome shooting

Where the river meets the ocean

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Monday Mountains (8)

Snowcapped Pyramid
Snowcapped Pyramid | Washington | 2018

I haven’t done a “Monday Mountain” in quite a while, but I thought I show off this photograph of a rugged, snowcapped peak in the Northern Cascades. Unless previous episodes, where I wrote about particular mountains, I have no clue how this peak is called. If anyone recognizes this quite distinctive shape and has an idea, please leave the name in the comment section.

Image specs are 1/800 sec @ f/7.1 and ISO 200, focal length was 100mm (200mm focal length full frame equivalent). The photo was taken with my OM-D E-M1 and the mZuiko 12-100mm F/4 Pro Zoom a few minutes after takeoff in Seattle, on our way towards Canada, while we were still climbing to cruising altitude.

Raw- and monochrome conversion in Lightroom CC Classic

I finally got home from Portland at Saturday evening, in the middle of a little snow storm. And I made the birthday party with only one hour of delay.  Next time I set a foot into an airplane it will be for a week of vacation in NYC with the Significant Other. Less than three weeks to go. Life is not too bad 😉

Wish you all a great week!

Marcus

Related Posts:

Monday Mountains (7)

Monday Mountains (6)

Monday Mountains (5)

Monday Mountains (4)

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