The Mountain - hpd fotografy

Mountains!

They have always attracted and fascinated me. Grand and majestic as they are, they turn a landscape from 2D into a 3D - no matter if they are 'just' the background or the main subject of an image. That's why you see some kind of mountain in almost all of my landscape work.

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A Fairy Tale Come True

After many, many years, I have finally re-visited the Dolomites. I wanted to see if they still are so mind bogglingly amazing as I remembered them. And what can I say... they still are! Look at this picture! Doesn't that feel like right out of a fairy tale? Skyrim, The Witcher, Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Game of Thrones - your choice. But it's not fantasy - it's the real deal.

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Glowing Olstinden

Strong sunlight being reflected by the snowy mountain called Olstinden on Lofoten islands. The exposure wasn't easy since the snow was very bright and sunny. And I didn't want a standard mountain-and-reflection image (which would have been nice enough, sure) but something different. So I included the see weed and turquoise-blue underwater landscape in the foreground and thus, I needed enough exposure to have some detail there, too. Amazing, what modern camera sensors are capable of.

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Swirl

The swirling Aurora in the sky together with the swirling water at my feet made for a very swirly experience - counterbalanced by those eternally immovable, majestic mountains. What a night! Who needs to go clubbing if you have nature like this? Lofoten, you rock!

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The Swiss-Italian Borderline

Not many times can you see the borderline between two countries as clearly as when the sun sets at the Matterhorn. The Italian side still in warm sunlight while arctic cold settles already in the shadows of the Swiss side. But wait - the shadow hasn't gotten all of Switzerland yet! The Hörnli Hut in the foreground at the very right still has some sun.

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Alpenglow at Gosausee

Impressions from one of my favorite lakes in Austria. The hike to the (frozen and totally snowed in) upper lake (called Hinterer Gosausee) took much longer than we anticipated and we just made it back to the lower lake for sunset. Everybody else had left already and we had the whole lake for ourselves - in the best light of the day, with fog just starting to form. But there was a price to pay for that (and a reason why everybody else already left): It was still quite a long way along the lake and by the time we reached the car it was pitch black dark.

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Skyrim

If you ever played Skyrim, you know exactly why I have chosen that title for this image. Doesn't it feel like right out of this fantasy world? But this is real. It's Stetind, Norway's national mountain. With my neoprene waders on, I walked far out into the ice cold Fjord to get this less known angle and take it all in - from the dramatic sky right down to the underwater foliage at my feet.

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A Starry Mountain Night

View from Gornergrat at 3100 meter altitude on a very clear night with an amazing full moon lighting. The warm glow far down in the valley comes from the lights of Zermatt.

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Bergsbotn Utsiktsplattform

Late at night far north on the Senja peninsula in Norway. The water of the Fjord is even greener than during the day - but for very different reasons. Capturing the Aurora without reducing the foreground landscape to dull black silhouettes isn't always easy. This time I got help from a passing car on the road below.

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Hatching Dragon Eggs

Young Dragons hatching and breaking out of their eggs at the far end of a fjord during the arctic winter. Well no ... it's simply cold enough for the salt water to freeze over. So, when the water level drops at low tide, stones pierce through the sinking ice crust and break it. No dragons. Sorry.

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The King's Awakening

Early morning's first sun-rays waking up the Matterhorn, tearing away the blanket of clouds which covered the mountain the whole night. It is a big and beautiful mountain, indeed. The Ski Lift station in the very lower left corner might give you a sense of scale.

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Fog Over Selfjorden

Lofoten islands are so beautiful wherever you look that you could literally stop your car every 10 seconds to jump out and take pictures. So it's a matter of restraining yourself to select only the best of the best - even before you shoot! But this time, I simply had to stop the car (yet again!) to catch the sun just making it through the fog rolling in from the sea before the whole islands would were covered in that fog.

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Gold Rush

Some of the nicest beaches on Lofoten are not accessible by road. That means in winter, depending on weather conditions, they might not be accessible at all. We tried anyway and after hiking for hours over a mountain pass through knee deep fresh snow we actually arrived at Kvalvika Beach and found... gold! Well ... maybe it was just sand in a puddle reflecting the winter sun, but it sure felt like gold anyway.

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Olstinden Nights

Olstinden, one of the most beautiful mountains of the Lofoten Islands in its winter dressing illuminated by the village lights of Sakrisøy (on the left) giving the perfect framing for a spectacular Northern Lights show - complete with reflections in the water of the Fjord in the foreground. Sometimes it just all falls into place...

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Moon over Gornergrat Railway

The Gornergrat railway is a mountain rack railway, located in the Swiss canton of Valais. It links Zermatt to the summit of the Gornergrat. Its highest station is situated at an altitude of 3,089 m. I was lucky enough to be there in the middle of the night to photograph the full moon above it. Actually it wasn't all luck, but rather quite a bit of an organizational effort.

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Lofoten Burning Sky

Lofoten are such magical island, especially in winter. Sometimes they provide it all: Hours of magic light in the constant sunrise/sunset, dramatic clouds in the sky, water just at the brink of freezing over but still liquid enough to reflect the amazing mountains, and ... in this case even a petrified footprint of bigfoot as foreground.

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Stellisee in Winter

That's the Stellisee everybody hikes to in Summer to take that famous picture of the Matterhorn reflected in the lake. But this time, it was winter and the lake was covered in ice and snow. So no reflection. That's why I decided to take an image into the other direction, away from the Matterhorn. So now, after seeing the Matterhorn reflection a million times, you finally know how the other side looks.

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No Fear!

Preikestolen, also known as Preacher's Rock, is one of the most famous tourist attractions in Norway. It's a truly vertical cliff rising 604 meters above Lysefjorden with an almost perfectly flat square top. As is common in Norway, there is no fencing or other safety devices as this would distract from the natural beauty. So you can go right to the edge, but only if you have NO FEAR.

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Our Hotel

Just in case you were wondering, how the heck I was able to be at 3100 m altitude on top of the Alps in the middle of the night. They have a hotel up there!!! Amazing Switzerland.

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