Tranquility lake

Tranquility lake in Tannheim, Austria

This picture was shot in August 2014 when I was on a holiday to Tannheim in Austria. Tannheim is such a beautiful place in Austria and it gives me total relaxation. I have been there now four times and each time it amazes me.
In the valley south of the village of Tannheim, there is this lake, the Vilsalpsee. The east side of the mountain range collapsed a couple of years back and that meant that the east side was no longer accessible for walkers nor any other traffic. Thankfully, nowadays you can walk around the complete lake again.

At the lake, there are these (touristy) restaurants and in front of the restaurants, there is this dock with some boats on it. If you come really early or late (this photo was shot late in the afternoon), the restaurants are nearly empty because the busses are not going after a certain time and you are not allowed to go there with your own car between certain times. And when these people are all gone, the lake comes to rest and you can make great photos there!

This shot was taken with my 10 to 22 mm lens at minimum focal length (10 mm). That gave me the opportunity to capture all of the boats on the dock in one frame and still keeping the bacground also in that same frame. The clouds were pretty impressive that afternoon. The only downside is that at that time I shot the pictures in JPG. Therefore I could not get the highlighted sky from the shot.

The camera was on aperture priority (set at 8) and with an ISO of 100, that gave me an exposure time of 1/250th of a second. In post I tried to get the highlights lower, but this gave a very distorted result with the colors, so I left it like it was. So, the picture was made on the spot, without any fancy settings nor post-processing. That made this shot a great impulsive photo!

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Location