Valle de la Luz

Today I leave to Buenos Aires for two weeks so I won't have any more pictures to post for some time. I do have a couple of shots saved but I don't know when I will be able to upload them.

Yesterday I went out and made some good shoots, but the red and oranges I had been seeing this past weeks are already faded and only brown and dark yellow remain. It is sad, but it also means that winter is almost here, and with it snow!

Those pictures will have to wait, but I do have a picture to upload.

A few days ago, I was showing the trails to someone I met trough couchsurfing.org and we decided to go out even though the weather forecast said it was going to be very rainy and very windy. It was both, and even though we walked 20 km I wasn't able to take my camera out of y backpack for fear of destroying completely. There wasn't a lot to show either.

On our way up I showed here a place were I had been couple of times before at sunrise, but I never got what I wanted, and the light at the moment was pretty flat.

Valle de la Luz

Valle del Rio de las Vueltas, El Chalten, Patagonia Argentina

On our way back, almost in the town, she pointed to the north part of the valley where the light passing though the clouds left only a small part of it illuminated, and the rest in shadows. Since the rain at that time was very light, I started running down hill to the spot I had selected the days before just in time to take a couple of shots. After that the clouds closed again, and the show was over.

I waited with her for 15 minutes more, but but that time I was soaking wet and without movement I was getting cold, so we decided to leave.

This is the result.

See you around!
Santiago

Hielo y Roca

Today I have four pictures from El Calafate.

The weather was very strange that day, sometimes cloudy and rainy, sometimes completely clear, but always very windy and very cold.

Light was very mixed on the glacier. The front wall was almost always clear, but the back of the glacier and the mountains that surround it were covered most of the time. With those conditions, I always tried to have the glacier in direct sunlight to keep the shadows and textures of the ice, and the background in the shadow. That way I had a nice contrast between the foreground and the background, and the ice wouldn't look flat.

The first one is from the face of the glacier, with the mountains on the back, already covered in snow.

Hielo y Roca

Glaciar Perito Moreno, El Calafate, Patagonia Argentina

The next couple of pictures go together, as both show the glacier with a solid background. In the first case its the cloudy sky and in the second its a forest in the shadow (pushed a little in post-production to turn it almost black).

Recortes I

Glaciar Perito Moreno, El Calafate, Patagonia Argentina

Recortes II

Glaciar Perito Moreno, El Calafate, Patagonia Argentina

And finally, some ducks in Bahia Redonda, just in front of El Calafate. I stayed there as long as I could, but I could never have all four ducks facing forward. There was always at least one turning his head, but three out of four is not bad!

Barcino (Pato Barcino)

Bahia Redonda, El Calafate, Patagonia Argentina

In the next few days I travel to Buenos Aires for two weeks so there won't be any new pictures. However I have three more pictures to upload and I plan to go out tomorrow to camp for a night in camp Poincenot so I might have something more.

See you around!
Santiago

Cascada de Estrellas

I am finally back from my trip to Chile, only with mixed results. I was able to get all the equipment I planned to get which was necessary if I wanted to go out in the winter around here, so that is good.

Unfortunately we weren't able to get to Torres del Paine because the weather was awful. Very strong wind, rain and snow, freezing temperatures, and worst of all, very low clouds meant that going in was pointless (we were going to camp for 4 days and not see a single mountain). In the end we decided to go back to El Calafate early and do some time in the Perito Moreno Glacier, so I will be posting some pictures from there tomorrow.

As for today, I have only a single image from a few weeks ago. Its from Chorrillo del Salto, a 20 m waterfall located 4 km from El Chalten.

Getting there is pretty easy, even at night, so when I saw the clear sky at midnight I picked my backpack and went there. I had been there several time before, and on the last one (a failed sunrise shot) I had found a nice composition I wanted to try.

Once I got there, I placed the camera on the tripod, and with the little light the moon gave (right behind the camera) and my headlamp, I decided on this composition.

Cascada de Estrellas

Chorrillo del Salto, El Chalten, Patagonia Argentina

After the first test shot I discovered that the town lights were reaching the right wall of the waterfall. Its the orange glow you can see on the right of the frame. The shutter stayed open for 16 minutes (a single exposure this time), the aperture was f4 and the iso was 1600 (the highest I dare to go with my camera) to create the startrails. After that it was time to wait for the camera to do its job while I slowly froze.

The lights from the city were something I hadn't planned, but they do add some color to the image, and in the end I liked the result.

See you around!
Santiago