When I was asked to join the black&white photo challenge, I immediately knew that I did not want to use already published images. So I either selected unpublished work or created new work.  But during this process I thought it would be nice to highlight some of previously published oldies as well. So here we go.

I think this is my first star-trail image. I captured it in 2009 in the middle of the night. Instead of breaking down the exposure into 30s segments and merging them afterwards, I did a single 6min exposure. This explains the noise. Still, I love this image of Half Dome with the star trails and to this day, it is the background image on my computer.

 

I often visit Yosemite, it reminds me a bit of the Swiss Alps where I grew up. One benefit of travelling frequently to the same place is to be able to see it under different weather conditions. Blue skies are nice, but having bad weather elements in the frame adds a lot of character and dimension. This image shows El Capitan rising out of a bed of fog on a cloudy day.

 

This is a day I will never forget: the shuttle Endeavour flew by in the San Francisco Bay Area on the way to its retirement home in Los Angeles. Half an hour before the shuttle appeared, the entire bridge was covered in fog and we were wondering if the San Francisco flyby would be skipped. But then a bit of wind picked up and provided this gorgeous view of the shuttle on top of the SCA (shuttle carrier aircraft) flying by the Golden Gate Bridge.

 

I had to go to Paris for a conference and naturally took my camera with me. I stayed close to the Place de la République and visited it several times. It was raining the day I took this image. Luckily it had stopped when I took this image but the ground was still wet and provided this nice reflection.

 

I barely have any full moon shots in black and white. This image shows the moon rising behind the Transamerica Pyramid , with the top of the tower beautifully backlit by the moon amidst the clouds.