I haven’t been out a lot with my camera lately. Well, mostly due to the weather and the season: It’s not so snowy but still not real spring. But I stumbled across a hike that we did last year, end of June. I knew about this one since a while but with “just” 620m elevation I didn’t consider driving there about 3/4 of an hour. Also, I never heard about some impressive views or so, so I never had it on my radar.
Well, a mistake as it turned out! That day we explicitly didn’t want to go for a higher mountain and just tried it. The trail starts at a rather steep 4×4 road and soon forks off to a smaller trail. At some points we had a view over to the higher mountains nearby. While we were there, I didn’t really see how to properly capture the summit that was half covered in clouds. But despite my concerns, I took a couple of photos because I found the scenery quite impressive.
Now back home, I tried to edit the photo and still didn’t succeed. Now, nine months later, I opened the folder and tried again. I tried different aspect ratios etc. But – long story short – it was the monochrome style that touched me! With a proper cut, the cross at the summit isn’t lost in the overall composition and the clouds separate the two ridges of the mountain. I guess I’ll come back to this photo once more later – but I’m happy that I finally was able to realize some of it’s potential.
As you can see on the photos, we walked a beautiful narrow path along the slope of the mountain. End of July, the grass was high and vividly green. What else would you want at such a day? It was such a joy walking there. Especially as it never was steep (compared to the start). A lot of zig-zag but always surrounded by lush green grass and tall trees.
At one point I discovered a really gnarly tree below the trail. It was easy to just walk past it without paying attention. It really requires looking around all the time while walking to see it. I went a bit back and forth to get a proper angle. It wasn’t an easy perspective: looking down towards the tree, with just a plain blanket of grass as foreground. To make it harder, I had to find an angle that didn’t include too much background which would have been very distracting. But I think it turned out pretty well!
Well – as you can see, I don’t have a photo from the summit – but the trail itself was so worth visiting! I guess I should just go there again this year to see it in some different seasons as well.
Hi Franz,
I like your stories behind the photos and in particular this one! (and the photos, of course, as well!)
Above all, the tree picture is really magic. I can imagine how hard it was to get the right angle and composition.
Thanks a lot Peter for this feedback! This is really appreciated – especially as I’m always thinking about if anyone really reads what I’m writing.
And of course I’m happy that you like the photo(s) 🙂
As usual, it’s a bit of try & error – especially as I usually do not have/take too much time for taking a photo while we are hiking. But it’s one of the spots where you feel that this SHOULD give a good photo and you just hope that what you (want to) see really makes it into the final photo.