news

april 2001

easter in austria

winter came back. perhaps i was a little too confident and a little too loudmouthed myself, bragging about spring and short skirts... quite a remote thought considering nights below freezing and mere zero scratchers around noon. because of the complementary road conditions i cancelled my trip back home for the annual easter hike with friends as well. being stubborn mountain folk they went anyway ... through the snow.

but fortunately things weren’t that bad down here around graz. at least no snow. apart from the temperatures, you could even call it reasonably nice - sunshine and cold wind, but sunshine nevertheless.
i went out photographing to a spot that could be translated as something like 'bear shooters climb' – a local recommendation. approach was via autobahn and a fast lane road where i - just after about an hours’ drive - skidded off on an unexpected exit, into a small hamlet and downshifted onto a one laner that lead me straight to the destined parking lot. there i was greeted by the familiar ‘jause (speak 'yowse') station’. originally intended as a bare bone shelter on alpine trails those jauses developed over the decades into a full service gastronomic enterprises, situated wherever there is a remote chance of one tourist to be trapped. but i wasn't that thirsty yet and therefore out into the woods, on the trail right away. expecting some moderate pacing to enjoy this beautiful young day and perhaps to make a relaxed photograph or two, i was rather in for a surprise. the first warning should have been, that i had to tilt my head up slightly, to see the snakelike trail disappear into the unknown forest. ‘well, nice for a warm up. i’m sure it’ll get easier after that!’
about a mile into the easier bit, i was already labouring hard for some positive thinking. sounding like a punctured tyre with a sewing machine humming in the chest you tend to get all sorts of strange thoughts. at that moment one of mine was, what an exceedingly beautiful country austria is. especially on mornings like this, there are occasional glimpses of eden . . . it was also about as crowded. most of styria is off the main austrian tourist routes and compared to them relatively quiet. i could have declined at leisure had it not been for the occasional hiker that energizer-bunnied by. for them of course, appearance had to be momentarily restored. here good hearing is of essence! remembering your younger days, you appreciate now, not to have patronized these ill ventilated buildings in disrepair, crumbling from amplified rock and roll musik and loose women inside. . . anyway – as soon as the faint ‘tic tic’ of ski pole points on the rocks is approaching (alpine hikers seem to favour the use of these poles to support their confident strides) it’s stomach in! chest out! and most importantly: off with that painful expression in your face!!! . . . after being left in the dust, let gravity get back to work ... so me and my backpacked 40 pounds (a loaded 8x10” and a full size tripod) kept on crawling up the trail ... very much like a turtle - a very old and tired turtle.
anyway - ascending at those speeds you tend to notice your surroundings sort of unblurred. so naturally i got caught a few times and made some promising exposures.
perhaps the most beautiful moment was my near collapse at a pile of felled trees at about 10:30 a.m. through the sweat blind eyes i saw thousands of fresh green leaflets on tree branches suspended in the mistlike morning sun. half transparent, they seemed to have become radiating sources of light themselves. very beautiful and fleeting. the sun had just begun to fill the valley by working herself across the huge sheltering ridge and i was blinking right up to her. so did the camera a few minutes later.
i already mentioned the problems associated with pointing the lens straight into the sun, but it's always tempting and it could just come out right this time ... probably, possibly, maybe...
the moment was worth three exposures to me, all stopped down to f.64 because i wanted it to look somewhat like a very dense and fine lined chinese ink drawing (... densely fine lined is of course the very opposite of a chinese ink drawing, but the mood of this scene actually reminded me somehow of these staggeringly efficient, minimalist decors).
all three negatives were framed slightly different and exposed for a zoneIII meter reading. and even though the scene was harsh in contrast i developed normal - hoping that the backlight mist effect would compensate for the hard sun. sure enough - as right as i was here, i couldn't save the first two negatives from being 'ruined' by the aperture shadow nicely projected three times tangentially. number three looks fine though - i hope the print won't disappoint. i want to have a very bright print with almost no blacks - shining with light. if that is not possible ... i'm afraid you'll never see the picture. but then again there's always another spring ...
the rest of the proceedings were rather straight forward. i worked on some shadowed trees against a sunlit cliff wall and some ripples in the valley brook. because of the bellows draw (i decided for a close up) i couldn't go faster then 1/30s which was on the side of underexposure
already, so therefore i wasn't able to freeze the fast moving water and ended up with something utterly undefined but with a subtle charm on it's own.
later on i tried the camera on some fine rocks - unfortunately with a waterfall cutting right through them. as much as i admired and photographed waterfalls at some point, as tired i am of the subject by now ... i guess you could call it 'overexposure'. this particular specimen disturbed me enough, not to consider a set up at all, but then it occurred to me that i could try to reduce the role of the structureless water (6 seconds exposure) to a balancing bright area within the main subject: rock and boulders. the successful framing took me quite some time, because there was always something that didn't belong there. but the n-1 negative turned out very well indeed.

at this point of the trail there was a board visualizing the remaining part by mentioning its height difference being 350m during the final 990m (a casual 28%). from here on i decided not to be interested in further progress anymore. exhausted but nevertheless satisfied i called it a day and hiked back to the car.

then - imagine my astonishment! after i slumped into the seat, fidgeted the key into the lock and turned the ignition ... silence!

'OH NOOOOOOOOOOH!'

oh yes! one look - i had left the lights on. going through all these tunnels on the way up i simply forgot about it in bright daylight. unfortunately that valuable seventh hand car of mine isn't that technologically advanced to correct my absentmindedness. but luckily there were just some other fine german tourists returning, that were kind enough to do just that and act (scientifically speaking) as an external com-push-ion engine.

the moral of the story: don't go photographing in austria, unless there's german tourists around!

sincerely
joerg