On the Tour

A few images of the hundreds of groups that pass through the Wengen area every day - they have one day to enjoy the area before off to Rome or similar.

Goodbye to Wengen

Goodbye this morning - yes it is raining!

Flower Portraits 4

Final day in the Bernese Oberland and a very hot humid one. We walked up from Kleine Scheidegg to Eigergletsch photographing new or attractive flowers. The red campion comes under the latter and is there in its masses. I liked this single spike. Interesting comparison - lefthand with G12, righthand with 5D and 24mm lens. Round-headed Rampions for Tricia.

Moonrise Swiss Style

Specially for Tricia - a truly amazing spectacle last night as the moon rose behind the Silberhorn while the mountains were bathed in alpenglow. I know that people are going to say the moon was added! I continued to take photos after the glow had faded. Later, when the moon was higher in the sky, the mountain range lit by moonlight.

Mixed Day for Photography

Today was dry and sunny after a misty start, so we did the Mannlichen walk.
The 24mm lens is my favourite for alpine flower photography but I also tried it with an extension ring. With the 25mm ring the focus is very close and the depth of focus very narrow as seen with the Sainfoin flower. Using a 12mm ring proved very useful for photographing small flowers such as this White orchid.
As well as many new species of flowers, I also had the privilege of photographing a dragonfly that had just emerged, an incredible cloud formation against the north wall of the Eiger and a very tame Fox.

Flower Portraits 3

Same weather pattern today with bright sunshine and clear skies in the morning but with thunder clouds building to give rain in afternoon. You can see the progress of the weather through the flower images that I took today.

Flower Portraits 2

Today we went up Schynige Platte, which is a 2000 metre limestone plateau fabulous for flowers. Unfortunately we only got a couple of hours photography before a hail and rainstorm stopped play. Here are Arnica, Dark Vanilla Orchid, Round-headed Orchid, Purple Gentian and Yellow Gentian.

Flower Portraits 1

Started to work on technique with the Tilt and sift lens - slow progress as it involves manual settings and difficult camera positions.

jungfraujoch

As the weather looked fine for the morning, we decided to take our one trip through the Eiger up to the Jungfraujoch. The station where the train arrives is just off to the left on the first image and the Observation building can be seen in the second image. The choughs were amazingly tame - great fun with their yellow beaks and red legs.

Lenses for Flower Photography

I have brought a variety of lenses to use for flower photography and gave most of them an outing yesterday. The pansies are taken with a 70-200mm lens with an 25mm extension ring, the Butterfly orchid with the 24mm tilt and shift, the Dark Vanilla orchid with a 50 mm macro and the Rampion with the G12 macro mode. The light was very harsh for the pansies and getting a bit low for the two orchids.

Day in the Blumentahl

The weather forecast proved totally wrong as the sun shone most of the day with a short storm in the evening. We went across to Murren and then into the Blumentahl (Valleys of Flowers). The light was a bit bright for flower photography but great for the insects etc as could get enough depth of field versus shutterspeed.

Sunrise at Wengen

These were taken for Tricia an hour ago - now the cloud has bubbled up and the mountains have disappeared. Rain is forecast but fingers crossed.