Archive for category Europe
August 5, 2009 – Grand St. Bernard Pass
Posted by Dave in Europe, Fall Color, Mountains, Picture of the Day on August 5, 2009
Grand St. Bernard Pass, Italy/Switzerland
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=824
Man, I wish I could live in Europe. This kind of stuff is incredible. And the craziest part is that you can DRIVE here. And there’s TONS of spots just like it! Really, it’s just not fair. I’ve noticed that a lot of readers are from Italy. You guys don’t realize how lucky you are. 
This is Grand St. Bernard pass, which lies along the Italy-Switzerland border. This was taken just on the Swiss side, looking back into Italy. The building on the right is the Swiss guard station, and the other two buildings are Italian hotels. There’s also a hotel on the Swiss side, behind me. We were there in early-mid September, which was perfect, since all of the grass and such was a brilliant gold color once you got up above treeline. I’m sure it’s beautiful *any* time of year, but in the autumn it was especially so. I wish I could have had more time there, I would have loved to stay in one of those hotels and just spend a few days hiking in whatever direction caught my fancy each day. But, I sadly only had about 6 days total for driving around and exploring, and this was the last night we had before we had to start bee-lining it toward Venice. Sigh. Next time, next time.
There are two Saint Bernard passes, Grand and Little. Grand (this one) is 8000 feet high, and as I mentioned goes between Italy and Switzerland. Little is about 7000 feet high, and goes from Italy to France. Both of them are accessible from the Aosta valley in northwestern Italy, which is capped at the end by Mont Blanc (Monte Bianco). I would have liked to have been able to drive both of them, but the timing just didn’t work out.
As you can tell, the view was a bit hazy looking back into Italy, since this was taken looking south, and it was mid-afternoon. The view north (into Switzerland) had better light (and I got plenty of pics that direction too), but the quality of the Alpine views was spectacular no matter which direction you were facing.
When I was there, I only had one lens with me, which is my 28-300 mm all-purpose whiz-bang best-thing-since-mayonnaise lens, which works for just about everything, but, since it starts at 28mm, I lose a lot on the wide-angle end. I’ve been thinking a lot lately that having a more wide-angle lens at least handy would be cool, as here it may have helped me get a nice shot that included the whole lake in the frame, as well as the mountains. I’m intending to steal back the 18-55 that came with the camera from my buddy Dan who is borrowing it, but I’ve also tossed around the idea of getting something even wider, but that would require spending some cash, which is never fun. (Except when it is.) We’ll see, that’s still an open question. I do hate the inconvenience of swapping lenses (which is why I’m so fond of my 28-300), but lately I’m realizing that it might be an impossible dream. Oh well.
Anyway, that’s it for today. See you all tomorrow! (Or, Friday, if I decide to go ahead with the 3-day-a-week idea.)
Map: http://bit.ly/kui06
Update: Oh, forgot to mention… Grand st. Bernard pass is where monks traditionally have, and still do, breed st bernard dogs for … All the things that you would normally breed such a dog for. Like carrying your booze for you.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300 mm lens. 1/200s, f/6.3, ISO 100. Focal length: 32mm.
Subscribe to the Picture of the Day via: Popularity: 21%
July 21, 2009 – Venice
Posted by Dave in - Best of Dave's POTD -, Europe, Picture of the Day on July 21, 2009
Venice
Tuesday, July 21, 2009.
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=851
Ahhh Venice. This of course goes back to that same Italy/Switzerland trip that I’ve already posted a few pics from. Venice was where our trip came to an end. (Well, kind of. The next day we still had to travel back across Italy to Milan, where we stayed one more night out in the suburbs before catching an early flight the next day. But.. whatever.)
To recap: we flew in to Milan, stayed a night, then took the train down to Vernazza (in Cinque Terre) for Trevor and Heather’s wedding. Stayed there a few nights, then headed along the coast with T. and H. (again by train) to Monte Carlo (which was actually quite a let-down.) Stayed there two nights/one day, then up to Torino. From there, Trevor and Heather went their own way, and Julie and I rented a car, and played around in the mountains for a week. We had no set itinerary, but we ended up hanging out in the national park (Gran Paradiso) for a couple nights, and crossed over into Switzerland, where we stayed in Zermatt. From there, we drove all the way across Italy (although, driving “all the way across” west-to-east is a lot less significant than north-to-south) to Venice, where we met up again with Treather for one more night (and dropped off the car.) Right, got all that?
We got in to Venice around 1pm, so we had most of the day to fart around. We basically saw the same stuff you’d see on a bus tour, as in, we didn’t get away from that central touristy part at all. (Do they even HAVE a non-touristy part there?) But, Julie had never been there, so she made me promise we’d go at least for a day. Now, about the picture…
Pictures like this can be hard to take. Anytime you’re trying to include both stuff that is illuminated by sunshine AND stuff that’s in shadow, it can be tricky to get right. Usually, either the bright part is overexposed (and all the color is washed out if you can see anything at all), or the shadow part is underexposed (and is completely dark.) I know I’ve covered this before, but it’s such a common issue that it’s worth going over again. Basically, our eyes have a much higher sensitivity range than a camera does. We can see a scene with both bright parts and dark parts, and make out the detail in both. The camera can only handle a much narrower range. So usually you have to make a choice about which part you want to be subject of the picture, and thus which part gets exposed properly. (Or, you can try to average it out, which sometimes works. Or, you can play games like with HDR photography where you basically combine multiple images after the fact, but I haven’t yet gotten into stuff like that…) There’s of course also the option of a split neutral density filter (which is a filter with one half clear, the other half darkened), which can make the difference a lot smaller, but I never think to carry one of those around with me. (Well, the bigger problem is that I don’t actually own one.)
And then, of course, you can just cheat, which is kind of what I did here. Nowadays, there’s lots of software tools that you can use to touch up photos. (Maybe you’ve heard of them? Nah, probably not..) So, assuming your picture doesn’t have too many areas that are either so bright or so dark that you end up losing data (once something is bright enough such that the values for the data point are maxed out, if something right next to it is slightly brighter, you won’t be able to tell the difference, and thus the data is lost), you can use software to lighten or darken certain areas of the picture. I didn’t do that a LOT in this picture (because I’m too cheap to buy Photoshop), but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t play around with it a little bit.
Map (Right, like I remember where in Venice this was…): http://bit.ly/D9Gy4
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300 mm lens. 1/250s, f/6.3, ISO 200. Focal length: 30mm.
Popularity: 18%
July 14, 2009 – Valnontey River and Gran Paradiso
Posted by Dave in Europe, Mountains, Picture of the Day on July 14, 2009
Valnontey River and Gran Paradiso Peak
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=784
This is the 2nd picture I’ve posted from the hike that Julie and I took in the National Park in northwestern Italy, Parco Nazionale Gran Paradiso. (The first one was the first ever Picture of the Day, as it turns out.) Neither this one nor the other one are among my favorite pictures from that hike, but this one in particular does a good job of illustrating something that can be really frustrating in landscape photography: the angle of the sunlight.
First of all, I suppose I should mention that you’re looking at the Valnontey River, and the Gran Paradiso massif. Gran Paradiso is a huge mountain/series of mountains that forms part of the border between Italy and France (Actually, I just checked – that’s a total lie, it’s not even close to the border. Whatever). It’s similar to Mont Blanc/Monte Bianco in a lot of ways, it’s just not as tall. (And doesn’t have a couple of ski resorts on it, and doesn’t have a tunnel bored through the middle for automobile traffic.) It’s inside a large national park in Italy that Julie and I visited a few years back when we were in Italy for Trevor and Heather’s wedding. We stayed in a very small village called Valnontey inside the park for a two nights/one day. We used that day to go hiking up the Valnontey Valley (named after the river, as was the village) toward Gran Paradiso itself. The trail follows that river up the valley for awhile, then doglegs left straight up the valley wall. It then circles around the basin high up above tree line. Beautiful trail, lots of glaciers and such right there in front of you. I *LOVED* it.
So, back to the point. I’ve already “spoken” about the difficulty of taking pictures right around midday, when the light is the harshest, and why that causes difficulty in taking what I feel are great pictures. But the angle of the sunlight is also a huge factor, one that can be extremely difficult to overcome. For most “regular” pictures (where you’re not using the sun for certain dramatic effects like providing backlighting or as part of the context), it’s nice to have the sun either be behind you or at least to one side or the other. This way, as expected, it’s illuminating the subject matter. The character of that illumination (color of the light, presence/absense of shadows, harshness) varies based on the time of day (and is usually more amenable to pictures later in the afternoon or very early in the morning), but the fact is, it’s there.
However, when the sun is *behind* the subject (and is essentially shining toward you), it causes difficulties. The most obvious one is that, in the case of a mountain, the side you’re looking at is then dark, but that’s not the issue here. Here, you can see that haze becomes a much bigger issue. I mean, you can still see the mountain, but the detail just isn’t super-crisp. All of the haze basically washes out all of the contrast. I mean, it’s of course still possible to take a fantastic picture even without the contrast, but speaking personally, I think that a big part of the reason mountains make good subject matter is because of all the rugged details that give them their character. They’re all unrelenting and rocky and stuff, know what I mean? So, the only time the the big, super rocky, glacier-carved mountain was illuminated such that you could make out all the detail was super early in the morning. When you’re hiking of course, it looks just as awesome and amazing as you can imagine, but that detail just doesn’t turn out so well in the camera. Thus, it’s frustrating.
As I hinted earlier though, that particular angle of the sun can definitely be used for good, it’s not always evil. For instance, a nice warm afternoon glow coming from behind can illuminate things like trees or flowers quite nicely. Or, a dark ridgeline silhouetted against a bright sky can be quite powerful. (That’s another problem – when the sun is behind the subject, the color of the sky gets totally washed out, so it becomes a mushy light blue or white, as opposed to the nice hard blue that you can otherwise achieve.) But, that’s not the effect I was going for here.
I don’t feel like I really expressed the ideas in my head about this subject that well, which is unfortunate. In my mind, I had all of these super eloquent and interesting points I wanted to make, and I just don’t feel like they got transferred to this picture of the day post. Oh well. Maybe next time.
Map: http://bit.ly/YeBly (Somewhere in the valley anyway…)
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300 mm lens. 1/500s, f/4.5, ISO 100. Focal length: 32mm.
Popularity: 5%
June 24, 2009 – The Matterhorn
Posted by Dave in Europe, Mountains, Picture of the Day on June 24, 2009
The Matterhorn, seen from Zermatt, Switzerland
June 24, 2009
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=833
As long as I’m on the theme of famous mountains.. This is, of course, the Matterhorn (or, Cervino to the Italians). It straddles the border between Italy and Switzerland. In fact, there’s a ski resort on either side (Zermatt in Switzerland, Cervinia in Italy) . I’ve heard that there’s lifts on each side that will take you up to the ridge, so you can ski between the resorts. Which is somewhat ironic considering that it would take basically a whole day of driving to get from one or the other. I know this because that’s basically what we did.
In today’s installment of piecing together the itinerary from when Julie and I were in Italy, I’ll mention that we spent a night and most of a day in Zermatt. Which is in Switzerland. After we had spent a couple nights in the national park in Italy, we drove over St. Bernard pass (yeah, where the dogs come from) into Switzerland, and got into Zermatt in the early evening. We stayed in a small hotel in the town of Randa, which is one town down from Tasch, which is where you catch the train into Zermatt. (You can’t drive there.)
The next morning, we parked in Tasch, and took the train into Zermatt. While there, we took the Gornergrat Bahn which takes you way up onto the mountain. That’s where I took this. (And a bunch of other pictures which you may or may not ever see.)
I think that’s all I wanted to say about this picture. That’s definitely all that I’m *going* to say about it. See you all tomorrow!
Map: http://bit.ly/15ED5Y
Nice shadow from the Matterhorn there.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300 mm lens. 1/200s, f/8.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 71mm.
Popularity: 7%
June 16, 2009 – Manarola
Posted by Dave in - Best of Dave's POTD -, Europe, Picture of the Day, Tropical/Beaches on June 16, 2009
Manarola, Cinque Terre, Italy
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=744
This is Manarola, it’s a small village in northwestern Italy. It’s part of Cinque Terre (which translates into something like “5 villages”) which is a national-park-y type thing along the Mediterranean coast. All 5 are little old-style villages made up of colorful buildings crammed together among the cliffs. 4 out of the 5 are right on the water, and the 5th is up on the hill a little ways. You can drive to most of them, but not *in* to any of them.
Julie and I were there a couple years back for Trevor and Heather’s wedding. They got married in Vernazza, so that’s where we stayed. We were in Cinque Terre for 4 days or so, and it was AMAZING. This picture was I think taken on the day of the actual wedding. Trevor and I had some time to kill before the ceremony, so we hopped on the train and visited a couple of the towns. As hinted at a few days ago, I think the midday lighting hurts the picture, but if that’s the only time you can be somewhere, you take what you get.
Several weeks ago I posted a picture of hiking in the national park. That was the week after we were here. In between, we visited Monte Carlo for a couple nights, then headed up to Torino. More on that later…
Map: http://tinyurl.com/lumopg
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300 mm lens. 1/200s, f/7.1, ISO 200. Focal length: 28mm.
Popularity: 100%
May 18, 2009 – Parco Nazionale Gran Paradiso
Posted by Dave in Europe, Mountains, Picture of the Day on May 18, 2009
View from Alpe Money trail, Parco Nazionale Gran Paradiso, Italy
(Copying posts over from Facebook, backpopulating…)
May 18, 2009
First of all, you can vote on this picture at:
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=797
I took this picture in September 2007, when Julie and I were in Europe for my buddy Trevor’s wedding. We spent the second week of our trip driving around northwestern Italy, mostly in the Aosta valley, which is surrounded by huge peaks, terminating in Mont Blanc (Monte Bianco as the Italians say), which is of course the tallest peak in the Alps.
We didn’t have a set itinerary, we just went wherever we felt like. We ended up spending a couple days at this little family owned and run hotel inside the big national park up there, Parco Nazionale Gran Paradiso (named for Gran Paradiso, which is another huge peak similar to Mont Blanc, which is inside the park boundaries.)
The park is famous for it’s hiking trails, as well as for wildlife. (They’ve got a couple species there that are either extremely rare or nonexistant outside that area, like the Ibex (a mountain goat thing) and the Chamois (a little mini deer thing). We didn’t actually see any of either, but a couple British guys we were talking to saw a bunch on the trail they were on.
Our hotel was in a little village called Valnontey, in the valley with the amazingly coincidental name of “Valnontey Valley”, at the bottom of which is, surprisingly enough, the Valnontey River. As I mentioned before, we spent two nights there, and one full day. That day was spent hiking. We walked straight out of our hotel, and right into the mountains.
The trail followed the river up the valley for a ways, then headed straight up the valley wall, and then basically did a ring around the end of the vally, hiking along huge peaks and glaciers and such. Good stuff.
Here’s a link to the map for this image: http://tinyurl.com/qj53vk
Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300 mm lens. 1/200s, f7.1, ISO 100. Focal length: 50mm.
Popularity: 5%