Imagine you took the world’s 50 most famous mountains — Everest, K2, Denali, Fuji — and put their image on a flash card. Now imagine that you’ve flipped through the entire deck and quizzed yourself. Could you name most of these mountains based on their profile alone? The unique silhouette they cut into the sky? Odds are, only two of those mountains would be gimmes. Kilimanjaro and the Matterhorn. Even Kilimanjaro might be a maybe, but the Matterhorn? Their ain’t another mountain on earth that rivals its facade.

On the train ride into Zermatt last summer, I had my back to the town as we rolled up the tracks. What I saw in reverse was the sight of every passenger leaning out the train windows seeking their first glance of the Matterhorn. At one point, I turned around, looked up the hillside, and bam: there it was. The sight of it made my heart skip a beat. I’m not kidding.

Photographing the Matterhorn is easy. Creating a unique image that hasn’t been done before … now that’s hard. Here are some things I learned on how to photograph the Matterhorn during my all-too-brief stay in Zermatt last June.

1. Get the Postcard Shot Out of the Way

Frankly, Zermatt would be a lot lower on the Must-See in Switzerland list if it weren’t for the Matterhorn. It’s not close to any other big tourist draws, and the town itself — while beautiful and full of nice restaurants and interesting hotels — is nothing to scream about. In fact, without the Matterhorn, Zermatt would probably be a ghost town of decayed old wooden cabins. You’ve come this far for one reason: to see this mountain. And while it is not even the tallest peak in the Mattertal Valley — four other peaks are taller — it is the only one you’ll notice from the valley floor. Because the peak is so isolated and domineering, it has become the icon of Switzerland. It’s lonely profile graces everything from the Swiss website home page to postcards to chocolate wrappers to lewd boxer shorts.

There are two places to get the iconic postcard shot. Postcard Spot #1 is just outside Zermatt on the hiking trail to Zmutt. Just after the trail leaves the road, it climbs up through grassy meadows dotted with old cabins (above). I recommend hitting this spot around 9 to 10am when the sun has illuminated the meadows. The snow-covered Matterhorn is usually 2 stops brighter than the foreground, so bracket and be ready to due some exposure balancing in post-production to capture how it looks to the naked eye.

Postcard Spot #2 is three-fourths of the way up the Gornergrat Bahn along the trail to the Riffelsee (above). This is the most photographed alpine lake in the valley, and for good reason. From this angle, the Matterhorn is more like a shark’s tooth than the usual profile. Had we not been traveling with an over-tired toddler (an entire blog post in its own right), we probably would have basked in the view for hours. The peak is perhaps at its most impressive — from anywhere in the valley, really — from this vantage point in late afternoon. The backlight, the seemingly vertical East Face, the bright blue sky, and the shimmering water of the Riffelsee create a unique magic that you’ll be hard-pressed to discover anywhere else on earth.

2. Capture the Banner Clouds

While the Matterhorn is not the tallest peak in Europe (let alone its home valley), it sure likes to act like it is. Because of its isolation, its location on the Alpine watershed, and its extremely steep slopes, the mountain creates a unique weather phenomenon known as banner clouds. In essence (and I’m trying to sound smart here, but I’m just regurging Wikipedia), wind moving around the summit creates condensation on the lee side of the peak. These vortices crop up in the afternoon, and are an indication of how inhospitable it is up on the summit (anyone up for a climb?).

From a photography perspective, the banner clouds are like a snowflake: no two are alike, meaning you can capture something truly unique at any moment. Its best to keep an eye on the peak when they form. What might look like a soupy cloud-bank can quickly evolve into a majestic flag of mist. I’ve already published my favorite banner-cloud photograph in an earlier blog post.

My advise is to just keep your camera handy at all time: banner clouds form quickly, and dissolve just as fast.

3. Pursue Non-Traditional Angles

Because we’re talking about arguably the most photographed mountain in the world, you’ll quickly discover how hard it is to shoot an original image of the Matterhorn. Interesting banner clouds and miraculous light at dawn and dusk can help your cause, but for other times of the day, it can be frustrating shooting this peak.

Compounding the frustration — especially if you are unable to hike far on the trails due to fitness, time or the presence of toddlers — is the foreground from many popular vantage points. To be brutally honest, I was disappointed a lot while visiting the Zermatt area, particularly when we traveled up to the Klein Matterhorn lift and visited the Sunnegga Paradise areas. I’m sure they are gorgeous in winter when the snow covers up all the cables, pipelines, roads, wires and development, but in summer, I found the heavy hand of Swiss craftiness to be a detractor from the scenery.

To combat this, I tried to find alternate ways to frame the Matterhorn. Ways that were unique and showed a new perspective on the peak. I’m not sure I succeeded a great deal, but two images that I’m still proud of are above. One is the Matterhorn at day’s end with one wispy cloud. This was taken from the heart of Zermatt, and it reveals just enough of the summit to make it unmistakable. As a black and white, it takes on a new life.

The other angle was with my Canon 200mm f/2.8 as we rode down from Klein Matterhorn. It was midday, and getting cloudy, but a beam of light burst forth and landed right on the famous Hörnli Hut. Situated at 3,260 meters on the northeast ridge of the Matterhorn, this improbably large “hotel” for mountain climbers is the main staging area for making an ascent via the traditional route to the mountain’s summit. Even in the above image, with a sunbeam cast right on the building, the hut is completely dwarfed by the mass of the Matterhorn.

4. Make a Memorable Portrait

This one is a bit more personal for me. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, we had an exhausting time visiting Switzerland because, well, we chose to go with our 15-month-old daughter. We don’t regret this trip in any way, but we’d be lying if we said it was easy. And poor Varenna, she was put through a lot during our two-week trip. Long train rides, odd nap times, hotels that thought a mattress on the floor counted as a “baby bed …”

Zermatt and the Matterhorn was at the end of our trip, and we finally — finally — found our groove with nap times and comfortable accommodations (sidenote: the Hotel Post is worth every Euro). On our last day, we traveled up the funicular to Sunnegga Paradise, and Varenna found her favorite place in Switzerland. A playground. An awesome playground. And while I bemoaned the dirt roads, cables, pipes and obstructions in the foreground, Varenna was ecstatic. In a field of dandelions, I snapped one of my favorite pictures of her (above left). I put it on the cover of our annual photo book of her that we give to her grandparents. It’s like: (1) oh, what a beautiful smile, and then (2) and what a beautiful field of flowers, and then (3) wait … is that the Matterhorn back there?

Sunnegga Paradise may not be the most photogenic spot for Matterhorn images, but if you are traveling with kids, they’ll love the playground, and those smiles just might last long enough for a memorable portrait.

Here’s a map of the places mentioned above.

In Colorado, where I live, you can see forever. Drive in from our airport (whose code should be BFE, not DEN), and you can easily see Pikes Peak some 80 miles south, and Longs Peak, some 55 miles to the north. Compass points of comfort — I grew up always knowing my place in this big, wide landscape.

I bring this up because the Dominican Republic couldn’t be any more different in this regard. Driving along the North Coast Highway, from Puerto Plata to Playa Grande, you hardly ever see the ocean even though its within spitting distance to the left. Trees and development obscure the view most of the way, with only a few tantalizing glimpses of cerulean blue here and there.

What this does for a traveler, in effect, is increase the potential for massive surprises. I wouldn’t have thought much of Sosua based on my first impression. Another town, crowded sidewalks, wires crossing the airspace over the road, motorcyclists dodging in and out of traffic, and then poof — you’re back in the countryside. Why would we go back?

Well, as it turns out, Sosua has an amazing beach nestled on a big bay, and its from here that many of the area’s scuba trips and booze cruises launch from. On our second day at the Ocean Manor Resort in Cabarete, we were alerted to a snorkeling trip done out of Sosua, and so we decided to check the town out. Unfortunately, the first time, the waves were up and the weather was awful for snorkeling, but as serendipity goes sometimes, we found ourselves strolling the sandy-bottomed commercial strip adjacent to Sosua’s beach.

When you travel with a toddler, you can’t help but see through their eyes. Varenna’s curiosity made Sosua an even richer experience. “C’mon, Daddy…” she kept saying, beckoning me onto the beach, under a tree, to a storefront, to a comfy looking chair.

And the hawkers did their best to woe her as a means to melt our hearts—I mean open our wallets. “You want a toy?” they’d ask her. “Look, she loves this inflatable alligator. I sell it to you as a good deal.” Not knowing any better, Varenna would wrap her hands on the toy, and Hailey and I would have to unravel the sale. It was harmless, and all part of the scene, but it made for some entertaining moments.

One purchase we couldn’t deny her was when she plopped herself at a cafe table and exclaimed “I’m hungry. Let’s eat.”

We ordered a hot dog for her and a beer for daddy, and then she charmed the guys who were hanging out nearby with her elementary Spanish: “HOLA! HOLA? HolacomoSTASS!”

She left with a seashell, and we returned a couple of days later to try the snorkeling. It was an experience not worth repeating. The promise of a trip to explore a protected cove where we could snorkel from the boat or from the beach (where I planned to hang out with Varenna while Hailey and her mom dove in) proved to be a bumpy boat ride to a random reef with little variety of fish and no way to be placed on the beach. So I clutched Varenna in my lap for an hour while we bobbed at sea. Big let down.

But in the end, Sosua was a delightful little spot. Don’t let the main strip fool you.

Roxborough State Park — located about 45 minutes southwest of Denver — has long been a favorite stomping ground for me, especially in the last 11 years, since my parents moved out that way. It’s quiet, filled with wildlife, and defined by a series of sandstone fins rising upwards of 175 feet over the valley. This is the same geological formation as Red Rocks Amphitheater and Colorado Springs’ Garden of the Gods, only it rises up from the hogbacks in a more hidden, lesser traveled part of the Front Range, making it more intimate and — in my mind — more spectacular.

I had very close friends from Tennessee visiting for New Years, and since we didn’t have time for a run up to Steamboat Springs — or any of the mountains for that matter — I opted to take them out to my parent’s house and walk into the park. As soon as we set off from the house, we were greeted by this scene, of the half moon positioned right in the midst of a formation we’ve always called The Molar. It wasn’t quite as dramatic as the Matterhorn eclipsing the moon, but it was cool nonetheless.

Here is a sneak peak of my latest project — Italy, Remasted. In 2005 and 2008, my wife and I traveled The Sexy Boot of Europe and discovered that Italy is indeed better than the hype.

For a combined five weeks we toured Northern, Central and Southern Italy, shooting and eating our way through such magnificent icons as Rome, Florence, Siena and Venice, and such lesser-known gems as Bolzano, Varenna, Val d’Itrea, Matera and Sestri Levante. Italy has a firm hold on our heart, and the images I have from there are some of my most cherished possessions.

Italy Remastered (working title) will be a self-published book via Blurb.com. Whether I sell it or not, we’ll see, but Blurb does such an amazing job of providing photographers innovative, clean layouts and quality printing, I can’t pass it up. So, for the last four weeks I’ve been chipping away at the images I have from Italy. It’s like a rock band going back into their catalogue and remastering a great album to enhance each song’s various elements. Since I’ve improved so much at post-production in Lightroom over the last two years, I’ve been pleased to see my images — both old favorites and rediscovered shots — come alive in a new way.

More to come soon.

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It has been a good two years since I did a family portrait shoot, so when I was asked to photograph the Wagner, Lineberry and Lamberton families out at the Wagner family farm near Hudson, Colorado, I was a bit nervous. “How do I do this again?”

Fortunately, the Lambertons are dear friends, and that quickly vanquished any trepidations I had about venturing back into the family portrait fold.

Furthermore, I was kind of excited about the prospect of shooting out on the Eastern Plains of Colorado. Most everybody forgets that half of this state is flat and covered in brittle grass and farmland. Much of it is private, and none of it is on the way to anywhere for me. It’s not like I just stop on by the Pawnee National Grasslands here and there on my way back from Lincoln, Nebraska. I just don’t head out that way … literally ever.

The Wagner farm is snug against an enormous grass field that faces to the West. My friend Tim (you may remember him from such asinine stunts as Hay Bale Handstand and Great Balls of Fire) was kind enough to get me on the farm for a good 30 minutes before everyone showed up … always good to scout a place and form a loose shot agenda.

The field had an amazing quality to it. It was late September, and the grass still had a little life left in it. None of the winter gray, but none of the springtime green. Just pure golden straw layered for miles. From a low angle shooting into the sun with my 200mm prime lens, it created an incredibly textured effect.

The Lamberton’s took the stage first: Tim and daughter Cora (pictured above), and Lexi and their son Quinn (three photos above).

Next up, I photographed the Lineberry family (above), Jay, Nikki, Turner and their 3-month-old daughter Peyton.

Next, we moved closer in to the residence. The home belongs to Marge Wagner, the matriarch of the family, and her sons Leon and John brought out the tractor for a photo of the whole gang. That’s Grandma Marge above, who was celebrating her 80th birthday.

By now it was around 4pm and the autumn light was getting very rich. The kiddos lasted just long enough to get a handful of everyone-is-smiling-and-no-one-is-blinking shots before the natural meltdowns happened. It was a fun shoot.

Who cares about Capri? That’s what I was thinking when we were planning our 3-week trip to Italy back in 2008. What I knew of it was that it was a Mediterranean hoity-toity haunt for the rich. Maseratis, casinos and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, right?

“Mariah Carey has a house there,” my wife added. Thanks … all the more reason to keep my distance. We had other priorities: Positano, Sorrento, Matera, Puglia, Rome, Umbria, Tuscany…it was already a long list.

So when we rolled into Sorrento at the start of the trip — at the end of what my wife and I will forever refer to as The Longest Day in Human History: an 8am departure from Denver, an overnight flight from Philly, a rental car debacle in Rome, a two-hour train ride to Naples, a transfer to Sorrento on the stop-every-50-feet Circumvesuviana, a two-mile hike uphill to the hotel — Capri was not on the agenda. It wasn’t even close to creeping onto the agenda.

And yet within an hour at the Hotel Minervetta in Sorrento, we were decompressed. The boats in the Bay of Naples bobbed like sleeping ducks. Mt. Vesuvius crowned the horizon, looking like it had been in a good mood for a few decades. Authentic Campagna-style pizza and red wine filled our bellies. This corner of Italy was pretty damn special. Maybe we should see as much of it as we could.

A few days later, we left Positano and the Amalfi Coast so that we could take the afternoon ferry ride to the mystical island that gave us caprese salad and short pants. We had three hours — not much time — but upon pulling into the harbor, we knew this excursion would be worth it. Chalky cliffs rose in all directions, and a pastel village with a humble expression on its face hugged a low, green saddle that separated the island’s two peaks.

We beat feet to the depot and took the second hair-raising bus ride of the day: the precipitous journey from Capri to Anacapri, a landlocked town located high on the island’s rocky shoulder. The bus was standing room only, filled with — surprisingly — a lot of locals. Below us lay a sea whose color can only be described as cerulean. Between us? Air and vertical rock. Not much else.

Anacapri was pleasantly sleepy and clearly removed from the outside world. It’s town alleys ensconced us in white wash, and our feet tripped here and there on uneven pavers. With the exception of the school kids who skipped and sprinted around the piazza, the town was largely silent. We giggled at yet another Amalfi Coast restaurant named “Il Saraceno,” had ourselves some gelato, took fashionable pics of each other leaning stylistically against white walls (ahh, the days before kids), and then boarded the Dare Devil Bus to catch our ferry.

We missed a lot on Capri: the Blue Grotto, the Faraglioni sea stacks, P. Diddy and his yacht… But that was perfectly fine with me. For an island that has such a larger-than-life reputation, it’s quite small, and yet we still found a corner where local life felt like … well, local life as you see it elsewhere around Italy. For a blitzkrieg three-hours of observation, we got a pretty good sense for the place.

What prompted this post? Steve Jobs.

“Oh c’mon!” you must be saying. “If I read another tribute to that guy, I’m gonna——”

I should say that one of Jobs’ most unsuccessful products, one of his “biggest failures” — Apple TV — is prompting this post. We bought one of these devices back in July so that we could run slideshows of our travel photography on our TV. For under $100, its been worth it, and so I’m going back through the archives, and retouching photo sets for the upstairs boob tube.

Is this blog timely? No, not always. So what. The whole reason to take pictures is to capture a story so that you can retell it forever.

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OK. So it’s been three months since we went to Switzerland, but I’m not done posting images. I’m just catastrophically slow at updating my blog now that I have my own business (by the way, check out our killer website, designed by HeyDay Creative).

On top of that, our little family has decided to move to a bigger house. Where this house will be, we don’t know yet, but getting our current place ready has been pretty consuming. The plus? Eventually, there will be new wall space in a new home to decorate with enlargements of Switzerland.

Switzerland still sneaks up on me and blows me away with what we saw. Will I ever see a landscape more beautiful than the Berner Oberland? Will I ever experience a better network of trains? Will I ever attempt to eat a three-foot-long coiled sausage bathed in brown onion sauce?

The answers are: No. No. And hell no.

For the last three major trips we’ve gone on — Mexico, Kauai and Switzerland — we’ve rented a couple of lenses from BorrowedLenses.com. Each time, we’ve made sure to rent a tilt-shift lens.

Now I have never pretended to be the most technically aware photographer. I couldn’t begin to accurately tell you how the optics inside these lenses work. All I know is that a tilt-shift warps the field of focus so that you can manipulate the scene in all sorts of wacky ways. With a normal lens, the field of focus is always parallel to the front of the lens. With a tilt-shift, you pivot that plane in all sorts of weird angles.

There, that’s the best I can do to explain it. Wikipedia is more eloquent.

On Lake Lucerne, we took a day-long boat tour, and that’s where the Canon 45mm TS-E really came most in handy. As paddle-wheelers and charming villages passed by, I set the aperture to a narrower depth, pivoted the lens down (or sometimes on a diagonal) and fired away.

While tilt-shifts can often miniaturize a scene, I find that they can actually show a place in a way that is more true to how the eye sees it and how memory imprints it. Take for instance, the image above. In my memory, the hills, the water, the trees — they are all splashes of color, nothing more. But the structures, the boats and mostly, the feeling — that’s what resonated and stuck with me most. A tilt-shift can capture just those memory burners. They’re fun images to share: “this is how it looked, but this is how I remember it.”

The same goes for this image of Wengen. No other shot I took of this town showed just how nestled in the valley it really was. A standard 45mm wouldn’t have done it as well.

To that, I say “yay, tilt-shifts.”

Summer’s end is fast approaching, which usually means two things in Colorado: luscious Palisade peaches are in season, and most of us are wondering whether we got into the mountains enough.

I started this summer with plenty in the way of mountain time, but they weren’t my mountains. They belonged to the Swiss, and they were ridiculously beautiful. But just recovering from the stresses of that trip meant a good three weekends in a row at home with our little family. By the time we unburied ourselves from the laundry, recharged our businesses, and spent adequate time with extended family, it was late July and I hadn’t seen the Rockies up close in months.

Fortunately, I had a father-son fishing trip on the books, and so on the second weekend of August, my Dad and I strapped a pair of lake kayaks to his pickup truck and set forth to Trappers Lake — one of Colorado’s rare gems, and the birthplace of the American wilderness movement. It was here in the early 1900s that a surveyor named Arthur Carhart told his boss that Trappers Lake needed to be preserved in its wild state for the good of mankind. His boss was a resort developer. Mr. Carhart had some cojones, and thank God he did. The concept of preserved, roadless wilderness is one of the best things about America.

A full 11 years ago, I circumnavigated Trappers Lake with my backpacking buddies. To this day, it was the most ambitious backcountry adventure I’ve done — and its a sweet nostalgic memory, too. Three nights, three lakeside campsites, and more than 30 miles of schlepping. We started at Trappers Lake, ended up clear across the 200,000-acre Flat Tops Wilderness Area, and came back. Two years later, almost the entire area would burn to the ground in one of the many massive wildfires that consumed Colorado in the summer of 2002. I had yet to go back.

It took much of Saturday to get to the White River Valley east of Meeker. Dad and I checked in to the Ute Lodge, a small rustic cabin resort tucked in the woods, whipped together some dinner, and then set off for the lake at sundown. The devastation of the fire was shocking, even nine years later. Empty pine trees covered the hillside like 500,000 upright matchsticks. The ground cover had returned, and returned with a vengeance. Thick green stands of grass covered the adjacent hillside, and along the road in the burn area, fireweed lived up to its name. Both of us found the scenery to be haunting yet beautiful.

At the lake, a profusion of wildflowers greeted us. Columbine, rosy paintbrush, dusky beardtongue, and goldeneye surrounded the trail and wrapped around the lake’s shore. We had come to kayak and fish the lake, which was turning out to be a lot more technically difficult than we imagined. The lake sits a quarter mile from the nearest parking lot, and the two access points were far from boat ramps. One was a wilderness portal trail that banked steeply up loose rocks and curved by the willow-covered outlet and shore. The other dropped from a parking lot down through meadows, but required a long uphill haul at day’s end. With two 12-foot kayaks and fishing gear, this wasn’t shaping up to be an easy launch.

We returned the next morning, and while I seized on the morning light and photographed the fields of wildflowers, Dad assembled the fishing gear and tried to figure out the day. We shore-fished for an hour, which was completely unproductive, and upon returning to the car, we came across an older gentleman who had collapsed on the trail. He was in a cold sweat, and his legs were rubber. I thought we were witnessing a heart attack. Fortunately, he was coherent, and with a little help, we coaxed him 100 yards down the slope to the parking lot where his sons met us. The altitude had completely nailed him, and we were hopeful his kids would do the right thing and drive him to lower altitude. While Dad and I are both fit and can handle the altitude, we’d seen enough. We opted for the other access point for the kayaks.

By noon we were in the water — the hike down from the lot wasn’t nearly as bad as we had imagined. Dad hooked into a cutthroat, but that would be the extent of our fishing success for the day. Trappers Lake has some of the state’s biggest native cutthroat trout, but everyone on the lake was noting that the fish were taking the day off. ”It is too hot and sunny.” “The hatch isn’t on.” “They aren’t hungry.” “It’s too windy.” Whatever. It was still lovely being out on the water.

By day’s end, however, it was beginning to get buggy. Not only are the dead, burned-up trees hard to look at after a day or so, but they’re clearly a breeding ground for mosquitos. Or maybe it was the tall grass and willows. Or maybe it was both. Either way, we lugged the kayaks back up the hill, both arms too occupied to swap at the little suckers. We strapped the boats to the pickup roof, and set off back down the winding dirt road to the Ute Lodge. We had one Samuel Adams in the cooler, and at a beautiful spot where the White River passes through beaver dams, we pulled over, threw down the tailgate, and split the beer with sunset.

After all, that’s what the trip was about: Dad, me, the two of us catching up, seizing the summer and a rare chance to get out of town together. It was the best beer of the year.

It took nearly an hour to discover what was happening.

We had hiked up to this meadow just outside Zermatt, on the trail that eventually leads to Zmutt and the North Face of the Matterhorn. It was getting hot, and Varenna was inspecting the gravel on the trail, handing her best specimens to Mom, and then pushing her stroller like the big girl she was proclaiming to be (“bick guhr! bick gurh!). We were all content, and not planning to go too far. After all, this appeared to be it: the iconic view of the Matterhorn, the one that conjures visions of alpenhorns and men yodeling “Ri-co-la” into the crisp glacial air.

But as we turned to head back to town, the moon was suddenly quite noticeable and on a very interesting course.

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And so, over the course of maybe 20 minutes, it swooped low, landed on the summit of the Matterhorn, and temporarily turned the world’s most famous mountain into a Santa hat.

It disappeared, then reemerged, like an arrow piercing the heart of Switzerland and coming out the other side. It was our second-to-last full day in the country, but it felt like an apt conclusion to the trip.

Photographing the Eiger…

Every story needs a bad guy. In the Book of the Berner Oberland, its the Eiger. Its history of mountain climbing is layered with one tragedy after another. From its Wikipedia page:

Since 1935, at least sixty-four climbers have died attempting the North Face, earning it the German nickname, Mordwand, or “murderous wall”, a play on the face’s German name Nordwand.

The mystique of this mountain is palpable the moment you lay eyes on it. From Männlichen, it appears like a blunt arrowhead piercing the clouds. From Kleine Scheidegg (above left), it resembles a lurking sharks fin. Both places are ideal spots for the classic Eiger photograph, but to capture images with a little more nuance, you really have to hike underneath the mountain’s legendary North Face.

We tooled around in the pastures underneath it at the Alpiglen train station (above right), located halfway between Kleine Scheidegg and Grindelwald, and it turned into one of the most transformative travel moments of my life. I’ll devote a whole blog post to it at some point, but in short, the Eiger began to shed loose ice chunks and snow plumbs in a display that was at once intimidating and exhilarating to witness. Our neighbor at the hotel hiked the North Face trail — which skirts beneath the entire length of the mountain — and he reported that at one point he discovered a single climbing glove beneath the rocks. Who knows how it got there, but it clearly captivated and slightly haunted him just seeing it there.

Photographing the Mönch…

There is not a whole lot said about the Mönch, which I suppose makes its name all the more fitting. It’s the strong and silent type.

Wedged between the Eiger and the Jungfrau, it is easy to put this 13,474-foot mountain in the backseat, but I would imagine that if it were located by itself anywhere else in Switzerland, it would be a major draw for travelers. From certain angles, it appears to be the tallest of the three peaks (its not, the Jungfrau is), and it is punctuated by a large glacier that oozes like an icy, mortal wound from its North Face. But it lacks the Eiger’s steepness and sharp angles, and the Jungfrau’s bulk and dominance. So, you’ve probably never heard of it as a result.

So, naturally, photographing the Mönch typically means photographing it with its neighbors, usually from that stellar view from the Månnlichen, or from Mürren. But its such a majestic beast in its own right, I’d suggest trying to isolate it for a few images as well. As I combed over the shots I came home with, only three really stood out as being just about the Mönch. One was a simple image cropped on the summit, which was simple and arresting just because the mountain is so huge. But I think the above two images tell the story a bit better. On the left is how the Mönch appears as you approach Mürren on the railway, which is an angle that best show’s the pitch of the mountain’s North Face. And on the right is a pair of hikers from near the Eiger Glacier station, who were gazing at the Mönch’s lower wall. They seem to be saying “holy crap” with their body language.

Photographing Staubbach Falls…

The Lauterbrunnen Valley is home to 70+ waterfalls, but hands down the most photographed is Staubbach Falls, which slips off an embankment of meadows and plunges 1,000 feet onto the valley floor, most of it in one unbroken fall. Situated right next to it is the tourist hub and namesake of the valley, Lauterbrunnen, so these falls get plenty of attention and a good deal of the postcard royalties.

I’ll devote a later post to the waterfalls of the Lauterbrunnen Valley, specifically Staubbach Falls and Trummelbach Falls. But I will note here that light conditions are best in late morning when the falls are hit by full sun. Shortly after noon, the spray of the falls catches great backlight, which is also fun to work with.

Photographing Mürren…

Where should you stay in the Berner Oberland?

It’s a question that seems to plague a lot of people based on TripAdvisor’s forums. We spent all six nights in Wengen and would highly recommend it (pros: within striking distance of the trails beneath the Eiger-Mönch-Jungfrau, easy access to the Lauterbrunnen Valley, first ride up on the Männlichen gondola). Although, next time, we will consider staying in Mürren. For one, this is where Mürren is situated (dead center, below image).

Two, it appears to have the best hiking access in the area, with several trails cruising amongst the meadows below the Schilthorn, and the quickest access to this area’s closest thing to a wilderness area, Hinteres Lauterbrunnental, an UNESCO Natural Heritage Site that is tucked into the back of the valley, and home to several massive waterfalls. Furthermore, from Mürren’s cliff-hanging perch, you could probably throw an Aerobie across the narrow valley into the west face of the Jungfrau. The mountains are as in-your-face as any place I’ve been.

I also found it’s streets and architecture more photogenic than Wengen, Grindelwald or Lauterbrunnen. There is a sector in the middle of town that is filled with older wooden structures typical of life in this valley before tourism. Like much of the Alps, these communities used to be quite poor as they were extremely isolated and depended upon the land and its unreliable climate for subsistence. The old sector of Mürren is a compelling reminder that tourism can completely alter a community’s economy forever.

Photographing the Swiss Life…

Quaint could be the most overused word in travel and tourism. I’d say its second behind charming.

They are so overused by writers that they have come to mean nothing, because any place that is desirable in some sense has been labeled so at some point.

But these two words do exist, and truthfully, travelers are irresistibly drawn to places that are simple, old-fashioned and pleasing to the eye. The rural Swiss aesthetic — particularly in the Berner Oberland — seems obsessed with capitalizing on it.

I’d be lying if I said “I didn’t fall for it.” I’m a sucker for the idyllic life probably because I’m not cut out for it. The back-breaking work… The changing weather… The smell of cows… The low wages …

But to see a wall of perfectly stacked firewood under the eaves of a rustic farmhouse? That’s camera fodder!

These images were taken at Alpiglen, a destination along the Grindelwald–Wengen railway that is situated below the Eiger’s North Face. The train station is literally surrounded by cows, and the trail to the Eiger passes through a working farm. In fact, any area with “alp” in the name indicates an area where farmers take their cows for the summer to feed on pastures and fatten up for the winter. Wengernalp, Grütschalp, Bussalp — this is where you’ll find your traditional Swiss cows and burly men of daunting constitution yodeling “Ricola” into the wind.

They move slow, they have massive bells hanging from their neck, and they have a rather vacant look in their eye. The cows that is.