The walk from Mürren to Gimmelwald is about the most beautiful in the world. On one side, a stunning vista of Jungfrau in the foreground, with Eiger and Mönch behind. It’s so overwhelming you forget that on the other side is a beautiful view of Schilthorn. Gimmelwald is a charming farming village, well worth a visit, while Mürren is a beautiful ski village, with several decks where you can order cocoa and sit in awe of the view.

The best picture I got (above) of the Lauterbrunnen valley was going down the cable car. I walked around the town trying to find somewhere to get the last rays of sunlight shooting through the valley, but never did find a spot. The towering cliffs and waterfall are very reminiscent of Yosemite.

Gallery of Mürren/Gimmelwald pic.

While walking through Interlaken the first night I was quite surprised to see Paragliders swooping down from the Neiderhorn area, to land in the park. The next day up on the Niederhorn I found where they were taking off, and watched them run off the mountaintop into the valley. Just a step or two and up they went. They were also up on Schilthorn the next day, and swooped down over Mürren, with Jungfrau and the Eiger as backdrops.

While up on Neiderhorn, the gliders would sometimes cross right in front of the three primary peaks: Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau. I waited and waited for them to fly across… The photo at the top has all three (L to R), with Jungfraujoch right above the chute.

As with most of the photos high up in the mountains this trip, I struggled with the white balance (too blue), but thankfully many photos are best in black & white.

Paraglider gallery here.

Smugmug slideshow (6 pics).

The Jungfrau railway windows, btw, can be seen near the middle of most of photos. Look for the thickest slab of snow, that appears to rest on top of a cliff. The windows are just below.

The final two photos below are shots I saw coming and planned for. Standing on the side of the pool with the sun directly behind me, I could see a group of avocets moving from left to right. Within a few minutes they had moved into an area of the water reflecting the fall foliage on the opposite bank. A beautiful contrast between the rather plain birds, strong red, green and yellow colors of the leaves, and the water trails left behind.

I became a bit discouraged as the sun rose and I had taken nothing of interest. Then I noticed the snow geese in the distance, flying towards the rising sun. I jumped out of the car, prefocused my lens, then quickly swiveled the camera towards the sun and snapped a few pictures, while avoiding staring directly into the viewfinder. I zeroed in on the proper framing rather quickly, and wound up with a couple of shots I really like (particularly the one at left).

The black and white photo below was taken well before sunrise, when the sky was blood red. I converted to B&W, and increased the contrast a bit. I think it works… but I won’t be certain until I come back to it again in a few months. Sometimes I need some distance before ‘knowing’ if something is good or not.

The photos aren’t as sharp as I’d like, despite having used a tripod. Partly that was a result of the flower pot, which had a tendency to wobble and mess up my depth of focus.

With the power of a remote flash, I plan on spending 2012 exploring the world of macro. Something to look forward to, for sure.

Christmas cactus gallery.

I described the capture of the shot on this post. To add a bit more detail, the photo at left (taken from the most picturesque Starbucks I’ve ever seen) shows the context. (As an aside, on the right, just off the edge of the photo, was a small cliff and is where I took the 737 landing, about 30 minutes later). I had wandered out on the causeway, about halfway down, with the setting sun to the right, hoping to get the monastery lit up at sunset. I did not have a tripod, so I sat the camera down on the concrete, and adjusted the view the best I could using my lens cap. One thing I didn’t count on was that my neutral density filter, which I had screwed on to increase the exposure time and smooth out the ocean, was covered in dust. Here is the original shot (click to see all those spots).

Yuck! Which brings me to step one in post-processing. I was unable to shoot level, so I first rotated. Then I edited out most of the dust. Big improvement!

I didn’t remove all the spots, because I knew I’d be cropping out some of the water and sky. Next some minor level enhancement to improve balance

And then the hardest step: cropping. My camera shoots in an aspect ratio of 2:3, but the ‘standard’ medium size print is 8 x 10 (2:2.5). You can see in my original blog post that I had cropped it down to 2:4 ratio, emphasizing the monastery and the walkway to the left, defocusing the eye away from all the sky and water. But it’s hard to find that print size, and I wasn’t about to submit an 8 x 10 ratio print, which looks like this:

That ratio throws off the composition. For some reason that I still have not figured out, 8 x 12 prints, which fit the images from my camera, are impossible to find. Frames are even harder! In the end I went with an almost panoramic aspect ratio, which does work quite nicely:

I typically don’t spend much time post-processing (and even this photo did not take too long), but I have always liked this photo, and that tedious work of removing dust spots, all 93 of them, was worth it.

I had grand plans of capturing Mt. Rainier: sunset, sunrise, downtown Seattle in the foreground, etc., etc. In the end, I had only enough time for a quick trip up to Crystal Mountain, late in the morning. Plus I realized all of the locations I had ‘google-scouted’ required either overnight camping or a hike at 3 am. Instead, a short gondola ride offered up a stunning view of Rainier from about 18 miles away. The mountain never did escape the ever-present clouds, so most photos had a flat quality to them, and that grew worse as the morning wore on. The polarizer helped immensely — it’s rare these days that I shoot outside without it. The very first shot I took turned out the best (even though I had left my camera in a high ISO setting. Oops). The clouds looked like fluffy cotton balls, and the shadows on the valley below create nice contrast.

With muted colors due to the clouds, I went black-and-white for all shots and post-processed quite a bit, increasing contrast, structure, etc.

A few B&W Rainier photos here.

So I returned with only a fraction of my shots, primarily of Lake Brienz and the beautiful mountains that tower on all sides. I woke up one morning after a front came through, and the mountains were dusted with snow. I zoomed in (300 mm) to the other side of the lake and caught this shot.

A stunningly beautiful area. The photos don’t do it justice.

Interlaken photo gallery (opens in new window)