Home»The main collection.»Pyrenees

This set will eventually contain a record of my trek along the Pyrenees. My route started in San Juan De Luz, on the Atlantic coast, and followed the parts of the GR10 in France, the Gr11 in Spain and parts of the HRP. The route finished in Banyuls sur Mer on the mediterainian coast. I camped the whole way but sometimes ate in refuges or cafes. I will comment on some of my experiences.I have about 1000 pictures to edit and will be producing a number of panoramas. For me the photography was an important element of the trip and I carried a Nikon d7000 with a 35mm lens. This limited my ability to to take close ups or telephoto shots. I'm tempted to do another trip with a close up lens to photograph plants and insects.The geology of the Pyrenees is facinating. The mountains are new in gelological terms but present different rock types across the range. Large tracks of limestone give way to wildernesses of granite. The limestone is much as we experience it in Britain though on a much vaster scale. The granite is continually being fragmented by ice so you see nothing reminiscent of the granite tors of Devon and Cornwall. Sometimes you feel you are in a quarry.Given the length of time I was there I took relatively few photographs, some days I took none. The fact is that photography in the Pyrenees is not straight forward. Apart from mists and fogs the area is often very hazy. Getting pictures that do justice to the landscape can be tricky. I'm happy to record fog and mist but I can't make haze express any emotion.All my pictures are edited to some degree but only using basic tools to adjust exposure, levels and contrast. Most are cropped. I don't generally increase saturation.Panoramas are produced using PTGui. I frequently use the graduated filter tool to bring detail into an overexposed sky or make clouds look a bit more ominous than they really were.