Observations about the universe, life, Lausanne and me

Monday, August 31, 2009

High and low

This weekends trip:

The biggest natural underground lake in Europe:



at Saint Léonard, near Sion, Switzerland. (Click the link on the left, and you might see the first picture I uploaded to Wikipedia, which is the one you can also see above. I feel all virtuous and public-spirited now!) Of course I didn't take my fast 28mm/1.8 lens with me, so I had to crank up the ISO like crazy. That's the problem with having multiple lenses: You never have the one you want on your camera!

The reason I did not take the 28mm was that we originally wanted to visit the Grande Dixence,  the worlds second tallest barrage sits:



 Doesn't look like much, eh? But that's only because you are lacking a frame of reference. Here is a view from the top:




It's 227 meters high - the little pale-green box at the top is a (very ugly) eight-story hotel. The view at the top was awesome, but unfortunately my friend M's knee gave out, so we couldn't hike to the glaciers nearby. Hence the subterran lake, and my anger for not bringing my fast lens...

5 comments:

  1. Nice pictures, but I have to say the one of the underground lake is wicked cool. Sounds like an excellent alternative to your original plans, despite the camera hassles.

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  2. really nice pics. but maybe you could tell wikipedia that they are stupid to think about deleting your foto...

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  3. @Stephanie: Yeah it was fun, but unfortunately this was the only photo worth a damn - despite my shooting in ISO 6400 (did I mention that I love my new camera?), there just wasn't enough light for a platform as unstable as the boat :(

    @garfield: Thanks for the heads-up - I forgot to provide them with a license. Should be fixed now!

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  4. There's no way you'd get me to stay in that hotel, no matter how strong they build dams. There's something bad feng shui about the whole idea. Yi.
    - Danielle

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  5. It looks more scary from the top of the dam than from below - the dam is so huge that you don't perceive it as such at all, from below it looks more like a particularly smooth mountainside!

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