Ruben Nilsson Photography
Svenska

Austria trip

Three July days in the mountains: cloud sitting on the ridges, a valley with one church, a lake with a borrowed jeep, and the road between all of it.

The cloud was low on the first morning, moving faster than it looked. Somewhere above the treeline it broke, and the valley opened below in patches — a church, a village, a river the colour of the sky. By afternoon the fog had dropped into the spruce and stayed there.

Two days later we came down to the water with a borrowed jeep and a canoe on the roof, and stopped on the verge because the light in the trees on the far side was worth stopping for. The last frame is from the road out, which is the part of a trip that photographs worst and remembers best.

17 July — the valley

Up before the cloud lifted: a ridge under it, a church on the hillside, fog caught in the spruce. The coach at the foot of the cliffs belonged to a group walking the ridge, and it waited there all morning.

A dark conifer ridge rising against a bank of grey cloud, a strip of pale meadow in the foreground.
Ridge under cloud 53 mm · f/10 · 1/250s · ISO 100
A small stone church with a tall spire standing among trees on a green hillside, mountains behind it.
Church on the hillside 132 mm · f/11 · 1/250s · ISO 100
A tall white cumulus cloud over a wooded valley, seen past a dark slope in the foreground.
Cloud over the valley 75 mm · f/16 · 1/250s · ISO 100
A wide green valley with a village and a pale river at its floor, cloud shadows moving across the slopes.
Valley and village 50 mm · f/5 · 1/1250s · ISO 100
Layered mountain ridges with a single house among trees on the nearest slope, haze in the distance.
Ridges at midday 50 mm · f/5 · 1/1250s · ISO 160
Thin fog drifting through the tops of a spruce forest, only the nearest branches dark and clear.
Fog in the spruce 115 mm · f/5.6 · 1/1250s · ISO 200
A red and cream coach parked at the foot of a steep rock face, dark trees above it and a road below.
Bus below the cliffs 56 mm · f/4.5 · 1/1250s · ISO 250
A dark ridge line against a pale evening sky, a thin road visible in the valley below.
Evening ridge 95 mm · f/8 · 1/250s · ISO 100

20 July — the lake

Down from the mountains to a lake that had been left alone all summer, with a meadow on the far shore and a canoe nobody used.

A view down a green valley from a roadside, dark foliage framing the left and a lake glimpsed below.
Valley from the road 105 mm · f/7.1 · 1/250s · ISO 100
An open military-green jeep with a canoe strapped on top, parked on a gravel verge beside a lake.
Jeep and canoe 28 mm · f/7.1 · 1/160s · ISO 100
A row of full, pale-green trees standing along the far edge of a sunlit meadow.
Meadow and willows 135 mm · f/5.6 · 1/250s · ISO 100

21 July — the road out

Power lines crossing a pale, hazy sky above a dark forested ridge, a single spruce in the foreground.
Lines over the ridge 90 mm · f/8 · 1/250s · ISO 100

12 photographs · Click a photograph to open it full screen. · 3 sections