Well, the weather over here so far hasn’t lived up to the expectations of a photogenic winter – we keep having rains and temperatures slightly above 0°C – no snow yet.
How nice it is to be able to reach the winter within an hour drive – yesterday, the Bavarian alps were still experiencing remnants of that winter storm Andrea that hit Germany on Thursday. A lot of fresh snow, allowing this intimate photo of a mountain hut near Unterammergau.
Photographic condition sometimes look dull to me, and then suddenly I recognize that I am wrong – something magical can happen anytime. Especially in landscape photography I keep getting suprised by nature.
On a rather cold day some weeks ago in the Chiemgau mountain range, I was backcountry skiing, the weather being rather boring with high fogs hiding the sun from view throughout the day, providing a very flat light (which is, with snow, normally not a good thing photographically speaking).
On my way home I was still looking for a chance to get some nice sunset light, but the light was very dispersed and I had nearly given up and moved into a valley running from north to south, knowing I would not get any direct view of the sun should it decide to show itself before sundown.
So I was not in a position to get the sun itself into the picture when it send its rays toward me – but the high fog of the day provided a very nice medium for the sun rays. I like especially the peaks’ shadows in the foggy air. The image above was taken with my little Olympus Pen E-P1, cropped to a Panorama. Colors and contrast have been enhanced in post production. I hope you like it anyway 
Having returned only this week from my 15-day trip to the canary islands – more precisely Lanzarote and La Palma – I am in the process of sighting and keywording the 1648 images I brought with me. Of course I also carried my GPS unit with me and will autotag the images as described in my instructional post on automatic keywording.
The one above, of the surpisingly calm atlantic ocean at Lanzarote’s southern coast, jumped at me immediately – and as a new experience for me this is presented here as it came out of the camera: 16:9 panoramic crop and black and white conversion. Really this “European Hawaii” allowed for plenty of time for photography and birding, do stay tuned for more details!
Edit: Fixed zoom function for image – click on the image to see the enlarged version.
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