On The Horizon

As I passed under the Dent des Portes clouds began to gather menacingly overhead. This was my first time hiking in the Massif des Bauges region of the French Alps and it was looking more and more like it was about to welcome me with a big dump of rain.

The heat of the day subsided, and a cool breeze began to flow across the mountain as the sun was shut out of the sky. Looking left I noticed a beautiful symmetry in the horizon. The dark clouds made for a fantastic sky and fortunately there was a lone hiker just making his way across the ridge.

His presence really shows the scale of the landscape, although I do wish he was a bit more prominent in the frame. You really have to view full screen to have an idea it’s a person at all! I experimented with a few different crops, but I was happiest with this one in the end.

Name That Lake

I went the wrong way a couple of times trying to find this hidden gem of a lake, and I still have no idea what it’s called. Maybe we can come up with a name here! At the end of an afternoon hiking in the nearby mountains I was almost ready to give up and go home.

It makes me wonder how many times I’ve been so close to something so beautiful and had no idea. If you’re interested it’s one of the three lakes just south east of Lescheraines in the Massif des Bauges. I’m looking forward to exploring the other two on another trip.

Reflections like this are always nice to look at, but there is also a subtle natural progression from dark to light across the image from right to left which I really like. Hopefully it leads the eye through the image. Although apparently we look naturally from left to right, so maybe that won’t work quite so well. Let me know!

Into A Dream

On Sunday I was invited on a hike in le Massif des Bauges by one of my esteemed work colleagues. He grew up in this range of mountains located just south of Annecy, and was keen to show me how great they are. Apparently his mother literally wrote the book on hikes in the area! So I wasn’t surprised that it ended up being a fantastic day.

I turned to take a shot after crossing this small bridge and the lighting was just perfect. That moment felt almost dreamlike, as if the bridge could be a portal into another dimension. I did my best to recreate that feeling with my processing in Lightroom.

If you want to create a similar effect, try boosting the Temperature slider into the yellow end until you reach a level you’re happy with. Then add a post-crop vignette to draw the viewer into the shot. I know lots of people don’t like vignettes, but I think they work really well in images like this!