Torres Del Paine . Patagonia . Chile .

Morning natural light on the "Cuernos" unique mountains .

© Alexandre Deschaumes
Ethereal nature collection 2012

All Rights Reserved

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Story :

Here we are in Torres del Paine, Chile.

Another place a bit too visited, but you soon realize why, when you get to face the mountains.

On this hill, we were in a very pleasant camp, rather deserted in this middle of autumn, and ideally placed in front of the mountains, near the shore of Lake Pehoe, full of islets and with its turquoise colour...
Some rest for us after our travels in Argentina, toward Fitz Roy. We spent a few days there, hoping the conditions would be inspiring.

As soon as the first day here, I get my photo tripod stolen, within what little time I had left it in a corner... It seems crazy, but it's true. Manfrotto 190cxpro4 tripod, $500. I've still got a couple weeks to spend here, and I have a half- broken zoom, struck between F/11 and F/16, and no tripod. Uneasy. Given that I'm mostly here to take pictures. And I do love working on movements and night.

While looking for someone in the camp who could have found it, I find a big dome with scores of crazy equipment inside it, tripods (not mine, rather some monsters with the head of the tripod big as my skull)... I wonder what it is... It was the BBC ( ! ) doing a report on the puma. For me, they are a bit the gods of the impressive nature movie (Frozen planet, Planet earth... etc)...
Well, of course, I didn't dare chatting too much, I just said "Wow, impressive" or some stupid thing of this kind, and I left...

So no tripod.
For this image, Mathieu gave me his and I could quickly take about twenty shots but his awkward tripod head was hardly able to stabilize itself, and with the wind I had to be constantly holding the whole stuff during the five or ten seconds of the attempt. Many lack accuracy, even this one, there is no real detail. But in a way it contributes to a kind of broad rendering...

Yet, after a while I decided to choose this one, because there is this crack in the sky. We feel the clouds moving laterally, but there is this opening which, in the sky in fire, gives a bigger dimension to the frame. Always the same, we are more aware of that when standing "far" from it...
There is also this shadow, on the left face, which slowly moves toward the lateral brightness.

It was during the sunrise, one of the most beautiful of our adventure.

What we see on the left, vaguely taken within the clouds with that shadow on the rock, these are the "Cuernos" (strange name) and strange shape too ! It reminded us of some sort of cake with an upper part of chocolate going in all directions... The smooth and golden rock down, then a visible crack and a quite different rock. The top is 2600m high.

First, I like to observe and realize what it does to me... It takes some time... And then comes a moment when I want to get closer, find details, turn around it...

That's what we did ; in the next days we will go trekking again for a few days in the inner valleys which rush down in this incomprehensible heap.

I will soon show you what we found there...

Oh...
I am pretty likely to organize a photo trip around those mountains and forests in Chile. I am thinking about a project for two weeks at the same period. Beginning, middle of April, 2013. It would mix trekking in the inner valleys and the wild autumnal forests, as well as other more remote points for this type of views, for instance... You can already contact me to tell if you are interested.

An example of the musics which accompanied the adventure.

[link]

Summoning. Land of the dead. Truly epic, and it gave us the feeling of climbing up new broad and unknown areas...

Translated from my french page ( facebook ) by Adrien => - ( thanks a lot )


© Alexandre Deschaumes

70-200 mm F 4 L IS ( abîmé ) @ 70 mm
F/14
5 secondes
ISO 100

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