Digital, Switzerland

Day 1 - Bath - Dover - Calais - Iseltwlad

We left early doors on Boxing day 2015 en route to an AirBnB apartment in a small town called Iseltwald, Switzerland. 

Driving for 12 hours 8 minutes (almost nonstop), I decided that It wasn’t a good idea to take any photos on the way down. If I had stopped to photograph everything I thought was photo worthy, we would never had made it!

Arriving around 22:30, it was dark, really really dark. Ellie pointed out the silhouettes of the mountains illuminated by the moonlight, which for someone who hasn’t seen snowcapped mountains firsthand before, was very very exciting.

Day 2 - Iseltwald - Murren - Birg - Schilthorn

As you’ll see in the photographs, we were so lucky with the weather on our first day in Switzerland. It was the most glorious sunshine, I feared for my skin.

Leaving our apartment, I checked and doubled checked my camera situation. I was carrying the following:

Canon 5D3 + 17 - 40 f4 + 24 - 70 2.8 II

Rollei 35 + Kodak 400TX BW Film

Canon AE1 + Kodak Ektar 100 Colour Film

Olympus Trip + Kodak 400 Portra Colour Film

Just before the trip, I had been in talks with the lovely people at Kodak Alaris and they had sent me a load of film to shoot this trip on.

Ellie had been to this part of the world before and thought I’d enjoy somewhere called Mürren & the Schilthorn mountain. 

Setting the 5D to ISO L (50) and RAW gave me the chance to capture everything at the best quality possible, I also made an effort to shoot at F5.6 and upwards to make everything super sharp. This was possible because of the bright sunshine reflecting off of the snow.

These photos are from the train to Lauterbrunnen from where you have to get a relatively new cable car up about 1000 meters to Mürren. We then strolled around town, and got the next cable car up to a mini peak called Brig (my favourite place in Switzerland, I think). Brig has a view over the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau mountains all you see in the photos. 

My favourite shot from these set is the final image in this set. I like the shadow tones, the detail in the mountains and the natural lines within the rock. 

Day 2 - Iseltwald - Thün - Adleböden 

Our second day was a quiet affair. We got up early (for the holidays), put on our snow boots, gloves, wooly hats and took a stroll around our little town.  

Iseltwald is right on the water of Lake Brienz (or Brienzersee). Opposite our apartment was the most beautiful hotel (we assume) we’d seen. It juts out onto the lake as you’ll see in the third photo in this set. each morning smoke rose from its chimneys as the log burners were lit, the golden lights are switched on and its reflection in the water becomes more defined as the sun rose.

The final two shots in this set are from a mountain pass in a valley town called Adelböden. I took a lot of shots here as the mist was rolling in from the right hand side of the valley. I also took several panorama shots that I will put together in Lightroom soon. 

In terms of the 35mm photos, almost everything here I shot on the film cameras. Using the meters within the cameras to give me an idea of exposure levels and from there on I used this information as a basis to work from, only using my judgement to expose all further images.

Day 3 - Grindelwald - Kleine Scheidegg - Jungfrau

Travelling by car to Interlaken West, our closest train station, we parked and went to get ourselves a late christmas present, a Swiss train pass. This pass enabled us to travel across the swiss railway network for free for 4 days with unlimited use. 

We decided it was this day we would scale Europe’s highest mountain, the Jungfrau. To do this you needed to jump on a train from Interlaken, to a small (but touristy) town called Grindelwald. 

This was a tricky place to photograph as the sun was almost entirely behind mountains throughout the day making it tough to expose for the town & for the mountains & the sky. As soon as the sun has crept around to the side of the mountains, it was much easier to capture the shadows & highlights. Using a bit of post I managed to pull out some of the details in the shadows which you’ll see in the third image.

Moving up the mountain, the train climbed REALLY high to a small ski village called Kleine Scheidegg. There were a few opportunities to photo out of the window of the train. We also met a small dog as you’ll see, we named him Egg after a lot of Swiss towns ending in the word ‘egg’ (i.e Winteregg).

The climb to the top of the Jungfrau made us feel REALLY dizzy so had to sit down for a little while before we ventured out onto the plateau. 

Shooting at the top was pretty simple, there were shadows but they weren’t really dark, there were highlights but they weren’t burnt out. It was an incredible view but I think we decided that the Schilthorn was better in terms of a view. Similar to the Rockefeller/Empire State argument.

Day 4 - Interlaken - Bern - Neuchatêl

Another quieter day in terms of climbing mountains. We travelled on the train to Bern. 

A quick note on Swiss trains. They are far the best public transport I’ve ever been on. They make British trains seem, late, expensive, disgustingly dirty, uncomfortable. Did I mention late?

Bern was a really interesting place to visit. Although I didn’t take that many photographs, I enjoyed it more than I enjoyed Thün. There was more going on, the buildings were more interesting and they also had the advantage of a fantastic camera store. 

My favourite shot from this lot is the first, the lobby of the Bern Bahnhof. The shapes and the lines suggest movement, the light in there was soft, dispersed by a lot of mirror surfaces.

Day 5 - Interlaken Ost - Broc - Gstaad

Our fifth day took us up another mountain pass. Travelling through fields, over bridges, winding tunnels. This was an amazing way to see different types of Swiss life and a great way to go looking for adventure.

Our travels took us to the Callier chocolate factory. It was a beautiful building and a fantastic tour, highly recommended!

Ellie had told me a lot about Swiss cows and so on the way home I took a detour. No streetlights, no pavement, single track, this was the place to find cows, and that we did as you’ll see in the last photo in this set. It was calm, quiet and so still. The cows didn’t seem very interested in us, they were much more taken by their big hay house behind them. This was quite late on in the evening so had to use my 50mm F1.4 at 2000ISO as the only light was from a small bulb in the top left of the cows barn.

We also visited a place called Gstaad. It was full of super rich people, ridiculous shops and didn’t feel like Switzerland at all, I will not be visiting there again.

Day 6 - Speitz - Visp - Zermatt - Matterhorn

Getting up at 7:00am on new years day is not something people normally look forward to, but this time I was really looking forward to it.

We made the most of our Swiss train pass and hopped on the train from Interlaken Ost, getting off at Speitz and then travelling South, towards the sun on our way to Zermatt and the Matterhorn Mountain. 

You’ll recognise the Matterhorn mountain as the image on each Toblerone packaging. It was the most stunning shape and I was desperate to get shots of it. I have to admit once I was up there, I was more interested in sitting down and acclimatising after feeling really quite dizzy again.   

Using the 17 - 40 at its widest focal length, I actually really enjoyed photographing the valley and mountains parallel to the Matterhorn as you’ll see in the fourth image of this set.

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Here are some stats about our trip:

Miles Driven: 2439

Cheese fondues Eaten: 1

Photographs taken: 1631 (not including 35mm)

Rolls of film shot: 4

Mountains climbed: 4

These images are my take on a week in Switzerland, hopefully they work well together as a set. If you enjoyed the images or the text, let me know!

Take me back to Switzerland ASAP.