Posts about Switzerland
Switzerland, a quadrilingual country in the middle of Europe, has been my home since 2001.
British Pathé was a leading news service in the earlier part of the twentieth century, when people would visit a picture house (or cinema) to see the latest news reels, instead of seeing them in the comfort of their own homes. British Pathé completed their YouTube channel this week and amongst around 85,000 films now online…
Now that the weather is turning fine again, it’s time for a new photo course. I’m collaborating with the Photo International Club Zurich to run an all-day course on my usual topic – portraiture and lighting on location – on Sunday, 11th May in Zürich city.
Léman is the original (some would say “correct”) name for what most of the rest of the world knows as Lake Geneva. It’s one of the most varying beautiful and vibrant regions of Switzerland, with a seemingly endless range of castles, vineyards, lakes and mountains. The local tourism organizations certainly had a lot to work…
If standing around in the street and drinking far too much whilst being bombarded with confetti, to the accompaniment of popular tunes being played by an inebriated brass band in eyeball-searing fancy dress doesn’t appeal, then there’s always an alternative to the traditional winter Fasnacht carnivals: the Fire Parade in Liestal. I wrote about Chienbäse (the…
The Swiss aren’t generally as keen on nature reserves as the British. Despite the stupidly beautiful countryside, there are comparatively few places like RSPB reserves (over 200 in the U.K.) and the National Trust (who is the U.K.’s largest individual land owner). We’re lucky enough to live near two of the small Swiss reserves at Lake Thun:…
Travellers, historians and winter sport fanatics (and those of us who are less fanatic but still enjoy the mountains) will love this old film by Ronald Haines, shot in 1956 in the Swiss mountain resort of Grindelwald and on the surrounding mountains. (Link via Grindelwald Tourism on Facebook.)
A wonderful time-lapse sequence from the southern borders with Italy, ranging from the Nufenen Pass to Zermatt and the Matterhorn. Film maker Christian Mülhauser writes: Through fog, rain, snow and even wind gusts of up to 120 km/h I am happy to have completed this project. Mountains of Valais is by far my most time…
With surprising alacrity, it’s time to flick back through my digital album as we approach the end of 2013, and the end of another year behind the camera. Here are a few highlights; a larger set is on Flickr. My favourite memory of 2013, embodied in the lead photo of this blog post (above) is…
Sitting at my computer this afternoon, I spot, out of the window, a yellow plane droning lazily around above the village. Not a full-sized plane but a metre-long radio-controlled model, with a GoPro camera attached, filming today’s glorious winter day on the lake. I couldn’t resist taking a few photos for the pilot and chatting…
I’ve added some new photographs to my online wedding photography portfolio, from a ceremony and party in October. It was a wonderful afternoon and evening for the couple and the location, at the Kulturhof Schloss Köniz near Bern, helped me to produce some wonderful shots. Two of my favourite photos from the event are the…
I’m proud that international picture agency Getty Images invited me to submit photos for their Flickr Collection a couple of years ago. Since then, I get the occasional request to add more and my small set now numbers 52 photos, with a dozen or so more currently awaiting approval. Although the percentage that I get…
I took a walk up through the woods from Heimwehfluh, near Interlaken. The top of the walk, after half an hour or so of wheezing and muscle aching, was high above the end of Lake Thun. Aside from enjoying the walk, having some exercise, and enjoying the view, I also discovered that the golf course…
One of my favourite walks this year was in the Gorges de l’Areuse in the Jura mountains, above Neuchâtel. We decided that we wanted to do a proper, long hike in an autumn forest and we chose well. The forests in this part of the country are stupidly picturesque in autumn and the route, beginning in…
Jo and I took a stroll around the Ballenberg open air museum on her birthday weekend a couple of weeks ago. The museum and its buildings are officially open to the public between April and October, but the site, its paths and woodlands are left accessible after the business closes up for the winter. It’s a…
Probably at number one on the list of “places I’d love to visit but probably never will” is the Mittellegi Hut, perched on the ridge of the same name near the summit of the Eiger. It’s famous amongst climbers as it’s along the approach route from the Eismeer station of the Jungfrau Railway, en route for…
A twin-rotor transport helicopter carrying another helicopter from the BOHAG company from the Mittelleggi hut down to their base station at Gsteigwiler. Crazy stuff. (Although, thinking about it, how else would you transport a helicopter if it broke down on top of a mountain?)
Just as summer arrived in the Bernese Oberland late this year, so the first snow fall has arrived early. But that’s OK: the sun is shining and it looks beautiful.
One of my landscape photos is chosen for a 2014 calendar, complied from submissions from the Swiss Twitter community.
Visiting the ridiculously picturesque castle and vineyards at Aigle, in the Rhone valley.
After so many years of driving up random little tracks and small roads in the Bernese Oberland, it’s rare to come across somewhere I’ve not been before. So when we decided to take a spontaneous trip out on Sunday, and found a little yellow line on the map leading south into the mountains from Kandersteg,…
I took part in our company day out yesterday, when we went down the river Aare from Schwellenmätteli in Bern, beneath the towering heights of Bern’s old city, to Eymatt, on the north western edge of the city suburbs. Although it sounds like a city-centre trip, the area around the river in and near Bern…
