Lakes District of Chile
This time last year i was in Southern Chilé for the wedding of a couple of good friends, one of whom is Chiléan, hence the location. I had never been to Chilé before, so it was a new adventure for me, I’ve seen plenty of images from there, so i had a bit of an idea, but they was nothing compared to the reality.
The view down the street... any street... of Pucón.
What an amazingly beautiful place, totally different to anywhere i have been before. The South of Chilé is all mountains forests, fast flowing crystal clear rivers… and volcanoes…
Awe inspiring! Nothing quite like waking up in the morning and looking out the window to find an enormous smoking volcano taking up most of the horizon, especially when the day before – the day of arrival – had been so overcast and rainy there was no horizon and the presence of the volcano was hidden. Something i never really got used to, i think the locals were wondering what i was staring at all the time.
The town of Pucón is surrounded by wilderness national parks, and countryside that is straight out of Lord of the Rings. If you like taking pictures, like i do, it’s heaven.
I had with me the trusty old Hasselblad XPan and the Lumix LX2, a sort of professional point and shoot. Lumix are now up to a LX5, so it’s a little out dated, but it’s 10 megapixels and shoots in RAW, so its a cool little camera to have. Most of my shots were on the Lumix, it was just too easy to put in my pocket.
Where are the Hobbits??
It works pretty well for the hand held Panoramic stitch too, this image is 9 vertical images stitched … from the Lumix. Click on the image for a better effect. This image was my wedding present to the couple, its on their dining room wall, 1.8m long. Not bad for a little hand held point and shoot eh?
I’ve got hundreds of XPan pano shots from Chilé too… one day i’ll get around to scanning them, in the mean time, check out that Volcano again… This image is a crop from a single Lumix LX2 image, so it’s only a small file, but i do have a series of images from the same moment shot on the Hasselblad XPan, i just need to scan them…
Volcanic Sunset