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Nature

Montreux Panoramas

by cimddwc · 2008-09-17

In this post I present to you three panoramas of Montreux and surroundings, stitched together from 8-10 photos each – created with Hugin. Quite good-looking results, I think, without much work – I just had to correct very few control points, and in one case (in the 1st picture) I didn’t manage to tell Hugin to properly put together the lake horizon (one photo probably was too slanted), so I had to edit it a bit afterwards. Seems that you have to do some cutting manually to get the proper rectangular result, though (since you never can hold the camera in the exact same height without tripod).

You see all photos (assuming the browsers do it right…) first cramped into the post width, then with a scroll bar.

The first panorama from southeast of Montreux, shortly before reaching Villeneuve, in 2732×320 pixels:

Montreux-Panorama von Villeneuve aus

» Single view
» Version with 6830×800 pixels

Second one from the shore at Clarens (the western suburb of Montreux) – Montreux on the left, the Rhône mouth in the center; 2056×320 pixels:

Montreux-Panorama von Clarens aus

» Single view
» Version with 5140×800 pixels

Number three, unfortunately with the largest vertical differences, so only a rather narrow stripe1: From Glion station, 300m above the lake – you can see Villeneuve and the Rhône mouth well, and the castle of Chillon on the left edge of the lake just made the photo, too; 3332×320 pixels:

Montreux-Panorama von Glion aus

» Single view
» Version with 8330×800 pixels

which can’t really be noticed here, downscaled to 320 and 800 lines [↩]

Move!

by cimddwc · 2008-09-16

On the Sunday of my Montreux holiday I went to Vevey, the city next to Montreux, because firstly, I expected better weather there, and secondly for the large flea market there (always an invitation to stroll around).

Quite a strong wind was blowing that day – wind and kite surfers probably liked it…

…and the waves could let off some steam, too:

And since these photos can easily be made to match this week’s topic of Projekt 52, “Poem interpretation” – a poem for a photo or a photo for a poem –, I’m using especially the last of the images above for this project, in combination with the poem “An den Mistral” (=”To the Mistral”)1 by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (see here in Projekt Gutenberg for its text – in German, of course).

Now let’s continue with the photos. In Vevey, I happened to come accross the final part of the Triathlon de la Riviera:

Participants, if you don’t want to see your photo here, just drop me a line.

And on the way back, there was a jet ski race at Clarens:

even though that’s not a Mistral at Lake Geneva [↩]

Gorge-ous

by cimddwc · 2008-09-13

After the castle, let’s head back to nature: into the Gorge du Chauderon, the gorge behind Montreux through which the torrent called Baye de Montreux runs – more specifically into its lower, steeper part.

Here, too, all photos are also available in the Flickr set (without comments, though).

A look back to the beginning – or rather the end, the bottom part where the torrent passes the stilts of that ugly highway, but I was walking up; and we have a look at the rock face:

A detail of the torrent – on the left with 1/400 second exposure time, on the right 1/25 second:

Rocks on the ground:

The largest waterfall in the gorge, due to its little bend and the many trees (Cut them down!! The tourists want to see the waterfall!!!) it can hardly be seen completely from one spot – so first the upper part that seems to spring from the trees, then the lower part, again with 1/400 and 1/25 second exposure:

Two other parts of the gorge – and all roads lead to… somewhere.

One of the refuges (and barbecue sheds) in the area, with the comforting realization that Uri Geller wasn’t around recently:

I didn’t go through the entire gorge to Les Avants this time (I went down from there two years ago), but turned right towards Glion where you soon leave the forest and encounter the first houses. (And a funicular railway that I’ll show on one of the next days.)

At the end we have a look at the opposite mountain where also the Montreux-Oberland Bernois railway is passing to Les Avants and on via Gstaad to Lenk.

The Bloom on the Quay

by cimddwc · 2008-09-11

The “Quai des fleurs” in Montreux got its name for a reason – but also other parts of the lakeshore with other names have nice flowers. Following is a small selection of 29 of my photos that can also be seen on flickr (there all in the same medium size; here on the blog, I decided to feature some in larger sizes, some as thumbnails only).