Bachalpsee (long time obsession)

this sunday we’ve been hiking along the Schynige Platte, one of the nicest hikes in Switzerland, being rewarded at the end of it with this magnificant lake. I am waiting for almost 3 years to photograph this lake during the night with stars trails and reflection of the mountains on the water…but is not easy as the perfect conditions are: moon in first or last quarter, cloudless night, no wind (for mirror effect) and to be a weekend and between june-september (else i’ll freeze to death)…make the math and you will see how often this happens in an year… 23rd july will be the first attempt this year.

 

as recently a friend of mine asked me how i get the landscape pictures and what filters do i use here were the steps:

1. manual exposure with polariser filter to bring up the blues and cut reflections to a minimum. notice how too bright sky moves your attention focus from the lake to the sky

 

 

2. using an Neutral Graduated Density filter , of strength 1.2 in this case, darkened the sky, but the exposure was still to short 1/40 and the water has ripples

 

3. adding an ND filter of 2.1 reduced the exposure to 4 seconds, enough to get a smooth effect. i am using Hitech filters for now, and when NDs of 2 or higher are used (single or as stacked results) color tint occurs, but the Lee Foundation and the Big stopper are on the way!!!

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