Bad Weather Cont'd - Höllental Valley

Bridge over Schwarza river in Höllental
by Reichenau an der Rax
16mm, 13 sec, f/16, ISO 100

Weather has been quite stable, all the time grey and wet and sometimes also foggy. For shooting concerts assignments that occupied me recently it did not really matter but for landscapes, I had to take that into consideration. If you cannot change it, you have to adapt to the conditions and find advantages of the situation. This morning I got up quite late... way after 10, however considering the fact I came back from the gig shooting last night and had one day before, it was quite early... I need to sleep from time to time. (CRO pictures from Gasometer Halle can be seen on my site).

I looked through the window and saw same grey and wet world. But I had to go out somewhere, I needed some nature, and silence, and water, and colours, and trees, and fresh air. When whole surrounding is covered by thick layer of clouds time of the day does not matter, I mean to have quality light. You can shoot all day under that massive soft box spread all over you. I headed towards Höllental around noon in the end. Höllental means... Hell Valley, it is a narrow valley between the steep limestone massifs of the Schneeberg and Rax with Schwarza river in between. Magnificent location to say the least, you have got mountains, forest, river, waterfalls, from time to time you even loose phone coverage.

Don't Trust Your Camera Preview, Use RAW and Gold-N-Blue Polarizer

Orth an der Donau

Don't Trust Your Camera Preview,

Use RAW, and Gold-N-Blue Polarizer... so many topics in one title.

I wanted to share a story of one picture. Here you can see final result, later at the bottom you will see 2nd version of same frame with different polarization. You may like the other one... I like both, but had to choose one.

I drove to Orth by Danube, not far from Vienna towards Slovakian border, to have a look around, still looking for Autumn, and thought that with late afternoon sun I can get something.

Overall the day and scenery looked quite dull, I did some shots here and there but I am not too happy with them. Real colourful Autumn has still not arrived. Then at one stage I spotted this shed built on water with its reflection and setting sky and reflected in water. I thought then, well, I will come back with at least one picture today. 

70mm, 1/5s, F16, ISO50
No filters

I liked the composition, old wooden shed with lots of texture, it had some atmosphere that captured my attention. The only thing I do not like is advertisement text, which I might in the future remove in photoshop. For now it is there.

Scenery as such is quite tough to capture properly not talking about focal length and f stops. But since I mentione them, this time I wanted tighter frame and I used 70 mm length with my typical f16 to have large depth of field. The problem was tonal range which is really great here. You have really bright sky, not seen by our eyes, then really dark stripe with trees, bushes and the shed and then again really bright water with reflecting sky. Here you can see the picture straight from the camera with no filters used, and what can you say... boring and grey.