Photo Essay: Europe and the Alps

Photography © John Baker, Travel Images

This photo essay represents the typical range of subjects on a Travel Images photo tour, and are selected in the knowledge that every client is able to obtain similar images. That is the goal for each of my clients.

There is an outside chance that some images are no longer part of a current itinerary,
so if you sign up and a particular image is important to you please let me know and I'll fix it!

European Alps by Micah Kaplan | European Alps by Eleanor Culling

This is a 'no click' zone! . . . just scroll on down . . .

	Tall churches tend to dominate the European landscape wherever you go, and whether or not they are your 'cup of tea', you might admit that given the right setting they are pretty spectacular. This one is is west of Innsbruck, and as you can see it's all about being there when the light is right.


One of the most stunning scenes in the entire European Alps. The church is St. Magdalena in the Italian Dolomites, and was added to my Alps itinerary in 2007.


While you and I check our texts and e-mail, traditional ways of life continue in the Alps. No matter what age you are, families work as one when it's time to get the winter cattle feed in.
	Most slopes are steeper than this, and the locals gather silage for cattle feed as often as the grassy slopes will allow each year . . . then the folk go off home and check their e-mail.
Near Sellrain, one of the many tiny churches in the region does it's best to get into next year's calendar. All that was needed to make it a certainty was for those slopes to be covered in wildflowers, which probably was so before the silage was cut.
	Candids like this can happen from Detroit to Kyoto, and Jaipur to Cancun, but as it happens to be in Austria I think I'll toss this one into the pot! Actually, the group saw this one coming and were ready when the of ladies made their way past the group.
Fallerschein is a remote village but without any electricity supply except via generators. Sooooo, the cow trough doubles as a refrigerator for the beer loving locals.


Another typical Alps scene, this one near Mieming in Austria.
	This is just about being ready when the opportunity arises. It's an overcast day, but this shot is all about capturing the essence of European life as it happens. It also helps that our farmer is wearing orange wellingtons!
An image that sums up the Alp culture for me. Taken high above Haiming in the Imst region.
	A lot of the alpine wildflowers grow on the grassy slopes, and are cultivated with the silage. This one was growing from a fallen tree alongside a stream.

	Neuschwanstein influenced Disney as you can see, and was started in the late 1860's as somewhat of a dedication to the musician Wagner by King Ludwig II. Photographically, there are plenty of angles and times of day to shoot this, but one of the best is inaccessible to the public during the early and late light.
Ludwig 'senior's' castle, Hohenschwangau in southern Germany near Fussen. Of all the angles at one's disposal, I quite like this one if it's not a 'postcard light' type of day.
	A pleasant scene in Ramsau, Germany, made all the more interesting by the low angle to add foreground interest.


St. Bartholomew Church on Konigsee [lake] in south eastern Germany
This is typical alpine Europe, and I included this one as I like the juxtaposition of the two buildings an their respective flower boxes. Unfortunately they get lost amid the low web quality.
	The cows don't just wear bells because their horns don't work [honk-honk], but because the tone can aid in locating a misplaced cow. This is a Glocken bell, louder than the standard Treicheln bell, and noisy when several cows and chomping away!
Even though taken on an an overcast morning, this shot of Gutenberg Castle in Balzers succeeds purely because the lower cloud bank gives nice separation between castle and mountain. The castle is estimated to be 11th century, and after falling into ruin in the 18th century was rebuilt in the early 1900's by the sculptor Egon Rheinberger of nearby Vaduz.
	St. Oswald's church in Sargans on the eastern edge of Switzerland. This is the dawn shot, and if it just happens to look very similar to . . .
. . . this shot it's because St. Oswald's and Sargans Castle are just a few hundred yards apart. The castle, really a fortress, originally dates to the 12th century, with additions being made in subsequent centuries.
	There are many, many high passes in Switzerland, and thus one will bump into a few low-flying clouds once in a while. This is not the time to put the camera away, but a time to explore a subtle world of soft hues and 'ghostly' sentinels.
A Harebell - the American Bluebell - growing above Murren south of Interlaken. I always suggest that folk shoot healthy species of any flora, but the 'bell' at the top of my image looks a little forlorn due to heavy raindrops, and I couldn't come up with a creative way of cropping it out!
	Another typical set of European windows on the side of a small chapel. Again I suggest squaring up to your subject as best as possible so that the viewer is 'comfortable'. Sorry, a recliner doesn't help.
Vineyards. Well, they're everywhere over there! Symmetry in an image is always pleasing to the eye, but just imagine if that tree had contained some colour, or was a 'photogenic' shape?!
	Village notice boards tell a lot of stories, and the image itself can often be very colourful. This one was in Murren, but the web quality won't let on as to whether you still have enough time to get over there for that buffet!
The group had looked on the bright side when on the previous day the cloud cover had been a bit too low for photographing in and around Grindelwald. Things didn't look much better when going into the Lauterbrunnen valley the following day, but there were pictures anyway even as the rain fell. Then, all of a sudden some 'magical' light hit as 3,895 meter Mittaghorn peak started to appear.
	The Eiger had been visible a short while earlier, but I still find this shot pleasing as it conveys a true alpine sense of place.
The Eiger at 3,970 meters makes an appearance on a day when few of of the higher peaks were visible. This was shot from Murren.
	Taken from just inside Italy at the top of the St. Bernard pass, with the peak being part of of the dividing line with Switzerland. When you want to capture shots such as these you'll need a wide angle lens and an aperture of f.22 so that the 'apparent sharpness' [depth of field] is ideal from front to back.
Here's a window in Murren that I wasn't able to square up to. No problem there, as I shot it anyway, then straightened out the vertical lines in Photoshop.
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