In Monochrome

This morning we awoke to thunder echoing round the mountains. It’s rained all day and mists have cocooned the village blotting out the world beyond. The rain has only finally stopped in the last hour.

The camera has been forgotten and instead I have spent some of the down-time doing a few B&W conversions of some of the images taken on my recent walk to the Britannia Hut.

Rock and snow bands, with a Serac cliff, on the slopes of the Alphubel

There is something special about B&W photography and the Alps. Images are reduced to the essential contrasting tones of white snow and dark rock. Images feel purified, simplified; the starkness of the medium is in keeping with the intensity and harshness of the mountain experience stripping it back to its bare primitive beauty.

Click any image to see a sharper, higher quality enlargement.

Setting out across the snowfields

Climbers returning to the Britannia Hut after climbing the Strahlhorn

Starting the descent to Plattjen from the Britannia Hut