Lake Lucerne

We continued on from Basel heading for Monday’s overnight halt on the shores of Lake Lucerne. Our original plan had been to head over the Alps and possibly even stay up in the mountains on Monday, but there was bad weather up there and we decided to postpone our trip over the Alps until Tuesday and stay at Lucerne. This turned out to be a pretty good decision, because this is the sight we had as we went for a walk before dinner.

f/4, ISO 100, 24mm (HDR)

The scene was so peaceful. The hotel we had checked into was out of the town so there were few people, few cars, nothing between the hotel and the lakeside apart from the road that didn’t have many cars on it, and there wasn’t much on the lake either. Apart from this boat.

1/800sec, f/4, ISO 100, 82mm

Yes, this boat.

1/640sec, f/4, ISO 100, 105mm

With the dramatic clouds and hills it seemed obvious to use HDR to bring out the best of them.

f/4, ISO 100, 40mm (HDR)

f/4, ISO 100, 55mm (HDR)

Whilst we were enjoying the view a tourist boat, presumably sailing from the main town of Lucerne, proudly flying the Swiss flag to set a lovely scene.

1/500sec, f/4, ISO 100, 45mm

Shortly thereafter the sunset began proper, turning a gorgeous orange.

1/200sec, f/4.5, ISO 100, 84mm

I quickly returned to HDRing.

f/4.5, ISO 100, 24mm (HDR)

f/4, ISO 100, 10mm (HDR)

In that shot above you can just about see a swan approaching. I let him get closer.

f/5.6, ISO 100, 20mm (HDR)

I took one final shot before we headed back to get dinner; I tried to get some leaves in the corner of the frame but after multi-exposure aligning and straightening it was cropped a bit more than I’d hoped. The leaves in the corner make sense to me but only because I know they’re there, to you they probably make the frame a bit untidy.

f/5.6, ISO 250, 20mm (HDR)

We then headed back to a hotel do have a remarkably posh dining experience – of the sort that has far too much cutlery arranged according to a secret code – considering we were only eating burgers and I has been wearing the same jeans for three straight days by that point.

The next morning, we would get up and take in some incredible scenery on our way out of Switzerland and back into France.

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