A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about the importance of previsualisation in photography, partly as a reaction against a YouTube conversation that I'd watched that week. I framed it in the context of a sunset photo shoot in the Bavarian Alps and a vision I'd had for a particular image taken from the top of a mountain an hour from home. Despite the forecast being good for the image I'd envisioned, when we arrived the cloud had come in and we came back with a very different image to the one in my mind.
After a fresh snowfall on Thursday and promise of a clear evening on Saturday, Sharon and I decided to try again to see whether we could finally capture what I'd seen in my mind's eye. And so off we set after a relaxed lunch to trudge back up the Wertacher Hörnle with our snow-shoes. We were a little concerned about the cloud that was covering us, but were relatively confident that it was just a winter inversion that we would climb out of. After stopping off at the Alm for cake and tea, we finally punched through the cloud to arrive at the summit just in time for the colours to start kicking off.
Shortly after breaking though the views opened up across the valley revealing a classic winter cloud inversion complete with fresh snow on the trees - another thing I'd been hoping for. Snow quickly melts from fir trees in the sun. The snow makes the trees much more photogenic in my opinion, it certainly makes them more printable as the range from dark to light is much reduced. The snow also picks up colour from the surrounding light too.
There was a cloud inversion deeper into the Allgäu as well. The saddle between the Spieser and the Boaleskopf provide the perfect foreground to the mist hanging over the valley.
Looking directly towards the sunset along the ridge from the pre-summit of the Hörnle the clouds confirmed our decision to make the effort to go out. Almost as good as the decision I made 33 years ago to ask Sharon to be my partner in crime for life. I sometimes have to pinch myself - I can't imagine many people who would not only agree to but actually jump at the chance to climb 2h up a mountain in sub-zero temperatures to come down in the dark just to take a couple of snapshots!
This is the image I tried to create back in January, the one I came out for again, and yet it's not the image I'd hoped for. Looking back at the previous photo, the mountain stands out much better due to the clouds obscuring the mountains behind.
With the clouds behind the Einstein (the rocky mountain centre left in the image below), the composition is a lot stronger.
The Einstein outlined:
And the Einstein without the cloud:
Our vantage point just below the summit to the Hörnle is at the edge of the Alps. Looking northwards past the summit, you run out of mountains and you're quickly into the flatlands.
This was pretty much exactly the image that I'd envisioned when we first climbed the Hörnle a few years ago. Snowy slopes and trees combined with that magical peachy winter sunset colour. If I'm honest though, of the two images, the one that will most likely adorn my wall in the future is "On Another Evening" above. Without the vision for the image though, neither photo would have been taken. This quantum-shift in my photography that has happened gradually over the last couple of years has made a huge difference to my photography; storing compositions to revisit them in better conditions.
My starting admonition - "be careful what you wish for" is directed at the fact that although the conditions that I'd hoped for resulted in a solid image, the better image was the result of what I initially thought was a spanner in the works - the cloud cover. If everything had gone according to my wishes, I would never have arrived at the more impactful image.
Time for one more photo before making our way back to the car park through the forest by the light of our head torches, the first lights visible both in the valley and the sky.
The bottom line? Don't be dissuaded from carrying out your plans if not everything lines up exactly as you expected, and if life gives you lemons...
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