Permanent Tourist

The personal website of Mark Howells-Mead

Posts about Switzerland

Switzerland, a quadrilingual country in the middle of Europe, has been my home since 2001.

  • A photo which probably represents the end of Autumn.

  • Kate’s Visit

    Loads of lovely photos online from when my friend Kate was visiting us in Switzerland.

  • My light in the darkness, who has more patience for my photographic madness than I could imagine in a thousand dreams.

  • Pfister faking it

    This poster is from a campaign for Swiss interior design company Pfister, the tag line of which states that the inner city of Bern is being re-vamped. What the poster specifically refers to isn’t 100% clear (at least, there appears to be no reference to the campaign online), it might be a clever (or unwitting)…

  • Into the light

    Edited directly on my k810i prior to upload. PhotoDJ has some pretty amazing image editing capabilities, considering it’s only on a mobile phone!

  • The Switzerland-based photographic community book project “Swiss Peeks – Switzerland Through Your Eyes” was retired at the beginning of October 2008. The three issues published between 2007 and 2008 will remain available for purchase in the Blurb online bookstore, but will no longer be actively promoted by an editorial team. The Flickr group and website…

  • A Sun, Drowning

    As office workers and shop girls sway home from the city on the dusty local train, the sun reaches out orange tendrils of light. Plucking ineffectually at the clouds, trying desperately to gain purchase, it sinks inexorably in the rolling landscape before the clouds catch fire and shadow overwhelms its realm. The death is ferocious:…

  • Thanks so much to everyone who turned out yesterday on the ETH campus in Zürich, for a great afternoon’s photography, teaching and learning how to effectively use off-camera flash and achieve both dramatic and interesting portraits. A surprisingly and gratifyingly high number of photographers attended – almost 20 in the group, if I remember correctly…

  • I had the chance to take portraits of my new team colleagues this week, for the new website we’re launching soon, so the portrait gallery here at Permanent Tourist has been updated.

  • A Bern Adventure

    My recent purchase of my own “travel card” – namely, the Swiss national travel pass – will allow me to travel across the whole of Bern, photographing all of the tram stops in the BernMobil network.

  • We’re planning a day/afternoon of photography on the ETH Campus at Hönggerberg in Zürich, on Sunday 21st September. We’re planning on separating into a couple of groups, with one or more experienced strobist photographer/s with a group of people eager to learn. We’ll set up a couple of shots, explain the lighting setup and then…

  • Dream come true

    When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I dreamed of becoming a band photographer. I couldn’t imagine being stage-front because of the regularity of the shots, but more a portrait photographer; taking bands out and taking photographs of them looking moody in grotty locations. Thanks to Dan and the rest of the…

  • Swiss band Choo Choo call their music “60s garage pop”, drawing influences from 60s teenage beat, pop and soul as well as contemporary garage rock. I have photographed them in the Dälhölzli woods and back lanes of the old city of Switzerland’s capital, Bern, as well as at the Funk am See open air festival…

  • Tea Dressing

    I bought Jo this dress last weekend. It’s lovely; a modern tea dress reminiscent of years gone by. Jo’s figure and style is greatly flattered by dresses like this and where it comes and goes from fashion listings (so I’ve read: don’t think for a minute that I have any idea of women’s fashion), Jo…

  • As the sky prepares itself for evening, darkening through shades of blue and colouring more and more from the day’s greyness, the cloud in the distance becomes more dense; a threatening presence trapped on the far side of the open doorway to a narrow alpine valley. Gusts of wind twirl the outer reaches, bringing the…

  • New beginnings

    I began my new job with Burson Marsteller Switzerland today. This is how it went.

  • Choo Choo

    This is my favourite of the shots I took of Berner band Choo Choo this weekend. The complete set is now online at Flickr. You can also see photos by Nick and Beat at Flickr.)

  • Photos from my last day in Brienz after seven and a half years with Gossweiler Media AG are now online at Flickr.

  • TFI Thursday

    So this is what it feels like to be on a last day at work. Not much different from any day over the past few weeks, as I began winding down some time ago and I completed all the clearing out of desks, drawers and files last week. Today, it’s just finishing up bits and…

  • I’ve decided to blog about our wedding and honeymoon trip from Switzerland to Scotland and back again and this is the first entry.

  • I’ll be photographing a band in Bern at the end of next week with a couple of friends and so Jo and I headed to Bern last weekend to scout out some locations. We headed for the lower, older part of the city below Kornhausplatz and wandered down through Rathausgasse, stopping off at St. Peter…