Yesterday the weather forecast called for snow in the morning and clearing clouds in the afternoon. Trusting the forecast, I headed up to Hintertux around noon, found some nice windblown powdery lines to ride for a while, then waited in the clouds at the mid-station lodge while I ate pommes dipped in pea soup. 😋 When I finally saw some clearing outside I hopped into the top gondola and spent a chilly but exhilarating half hour up top photographing various mountains as they emerged briefly from the blowing clouds. At 4pm sharp I got kicked out but couldn't resist snapping a couple last photos as the guy stood next to me with a stern and impatient look on his face!

One persistent question with my photography on this trip is whether to publish color or black & white versions of my photos. Winter alpine photos tend to be particularly well suited for black & white treatment, since the snow-and-rock scenes are mostly monochrome to begin with and often the only colors are blue tones in the sky and snow. So it's tempting to just do all the photos in black & white, but yet oftentimes I find that I still like the color versions best.

On one hand, with black & white photos there's more leeway to push and play with the contrast to add drama to a scene while still retaining a natural look (well, as natural as black & white can be). For example, I can darken the sky and boost the contrast to a degree that would look silly in color, but still natural in monochrome. So, some scenes that look somewhat flat in color can look more dramatic and compelling in black & white.

On the other hand, fully de-saturated neutral monochrome images (which is how I like to process them) have a warmer tone than the cool blue colors of winter photos, so sometimes with black & white you lose the cold winter feeling which can be an important element for many winter scenes. Also sometimes color itself adds depth and dimensionality to an image that is lacking from a monochrome version regardless of the contrast. And finally, sometimes monochrome photos can just end up looking too contrived and "artsy for artsy-sake", which is definitely not what I'm going for.

In the end, it's a gut instinct and I always just opt for the version that has the better feeling to it. With the first four photos above, the blue colors give the photos a depth and sense of winter cold that was lacking in their black & white versions; while the last three images had too much flat atmospheric blue color throughout and look much more appealing (to me) in black & white.