This week I had the opportunity to witness two light shows, one constructed by the hands of humans, and the other an incredible natural phenomenon. Lights and Summits was the first chance, where several mountain ranges across the canton of Valais were lit up simultaneously. It was not until I was driving towards the Dents du Midi that I found out that the light show would last for only three minutes. “Are you kidding me?”, my rather blunt response. I pictured an evening of photographing the mountain range from a host of different angles, but in fact I only captured 6 frames during the entire event. It felt a little like the Tour de France, where you often commute all day for the riders to the fly past you in 30 seconds. Three minutes in and, as predicted, the lights went out. Advertising for this event had been sparse and I was actually one of five people (all of whom were in my group) that had turned up to the recommended viewpoint that i’d seen on the organisers website. Literally there was no one else there! One of the most amazing things i’ve seen in the mountains and no one around. Perfect.
The second light show this week was seen by a few more people. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions got to witness a solar eclipse earlier this morning. Here in Switzerland it was possible to just catch a partial eclipse, but the feeling as the town descended into semi darkness was still incredible. I would have loved to have been somewhere else with a foreground element to provide some contrast to the image, with the sun very high and surrounded by clouds from where I was watching. It was great though to turn the camera on the various people who were watching the event unfold around me.
10:30 rolled around with a pretty impressive partial eclipse
People had come out to witness the eclipse in some grounds adjacent to me
A lone man takes it all in from lakeside