Landkreis Oberallgäu

Here's another photo from our tour to the Rappensee lake in the german Alps. After shooting sunset the evening before we got up very early to shoot the stars. At such a dark place there were perfect conditions. We could see the milkyway and the lake lay so calm between the mountains.

Although I like those milkyway photos, when I see them from other photographers everytime I start working on my own photos I don't like this artificial look. The milky way is so dominant in many of those photos and also here it would have been a bright blotch in the sky. So I went for a little more creative blending here to get a more natural look. I had 5 shots for noise averaging. Then I had a very long exposure of several minutes where clouds were streaking across the sky. Those I blended to get a nice looking sky. Then I had a birghter exposure which I shoot nearly an hour after taking the first photo. This one I used for foreground detail.

A lot of postprocessing work but I like the result. Hope you do too :-)

The German/Austrian mountains in Oberstaufen, Bavaria near lake Bodensee

This is another photo from a very productive weekend trip to the german alps near Oberstdorf. This is a view towards Rappensee lake with the Rappenseekopf mountain on the left side. We were so lucky with the light that evening. An hour earlier the sky was completely covered with clouds but to the west we could already see the gap. Then we waited and were rewarded with this sweet light.

The leaving sun at the end of a beautiful fall day...