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Beautiful animal in beautiful evening light. Due to the surrounding high mountains there are only a few little spots where soft warm light illuminates the slopes.

Even in this barren and rocky environment you can find some unbreakable plants.

There are no better conditions like low clouds battling with the sun.

Tender touch of warm light on top of the massive granite towers which stretch up about 1,900 meters from the lake.
One silly human behavior that one can always observe, no matter where you are, is the lack of individual initiative. People don’t go to places (or even spend some time there) which are beautiful or of a personal interest, they go to places where other people go. The cars in Yellowstone don’t stop where there’s a grizzly in the field, they stop where all the other cars do. You want to enjoy Yosemite (probably the same in Torres del Paine in February) alone during the high season? Just go out before 09:00 a.m.! On one side this behavior often drives me crazy and on the other side I’m happy about it, because so some zones can be “sacrificed for the crowds” but all the other, often much more beautiful, areas don’t get any attention and actually stay widely untouched and unexploited.

Close-up of a dispute between two males, taken at 145mm.

I really love these pre-dawn light conditions.
Actually, because of all of the experiences we made there once again and the fact, that due to these circumstances I only took a handful of photographs up there and these pictures show absolutely no innovation, I wasn’t sure whether I would like to show photographs of the towers from this location here. But, now at home, I could quickly go through these pictures and process them. The place itself of course is just spectacular and from inspiring rough beauty. So I decide to bring some of these images here as my first Patagonian posting to get over and done with this chapter ;)

In German the "ibex" is called "Steinbock" which actually means "stone buck". Guess why ;)

Where the water leaves the glacier lake and finally falls down to the valley the storms come up.
Just to make it clear: I only touched the various issues here, I cannot offer any concrete solutions for all the difficulties yet, my thoughts are still not sorted, I’m short in experiences and I’m also only a guest here but I would like to call the guest house of nature home.

Enough of that now, let’s switch to something easier to handle ;) During the upcoming months I will try to bring this blog to life again and post sets of new images hopefully more often. And to force myself to also work on all the still untouched photographs from 2016 on my hard drive, I will always bring a non-Patagonian entry in between two Patagonia postings.

Additionally I decided to prospectively send out a short e-mail to everyone who would like to stay up-dated. So, if you want to receive a short message every time some new images are shown here, just drop me a line to photo@rupertkogler.com and I will put you on my mailing list.

Thanks for your attention, have a great day :)

Much appreciated, thanks a lot.
For those who don't know, Alpine Ibexes have already been almost lost. They've been hunt extremely close to extinction in Europe by the beginning of the 19^th century. Only about 100 individuals survived in Italy's Gran Paradiso National Park. In 1924 the rewilding of these mammals in Austria started. Now there are about 4,000 individuals in Austria, most of them in the areas of the Nationalpark Hohe Tauern.

Men at work. It wasn't an easy task to bring out the lovely autumn colors as we were forced to shoot towards the light and under totally clear skies in the evening. (© Ulrike Breitwieser)
All in all it was a really great day and a big pleasure to lead this wonderful group. Time flew and in the end we spent 14 hours shooting and learning from each other. Thank you guys!

When you hope for an ibex to appear on the ridge ;)

Another one of my 2016 favorites.
I'm really happy, that we decided to go to Cabo Dos Bahías, because we actually liked it much more than Valdés. As so often, the fact that a place is way more popular doesn't mean it's the better choice. At least in terms of Magellanic Penguins we really prefered Cabo Dos Bahías. ... and of course we enjoyed the rather warm days right at the beach ;)

The bird on its slowely fading base.

Almost unreal contrast in the different layers of clouds.

Awarded in the category "Mammals".

Colorful sunset in the habitats of the Hellebores.

A little shorebird fighting against the heavy storms at one of the coasts of Valdés.

Autumn at its best.

During our entire stay in Los Glaciares the conditions were wonderful. We could see the summits all the time except on the very first day.
Although there have been thick clouds hiding the mountains on our fist day of hiking in Los Glaciares, we where already pretty excited about the beauty of this place. And we didn’t know what vistas will lie ahead of us. The morning of our second day I already got up at 02:30 a.m. to check the conditions. As I left the tent the full moon lightened up the night and illuminated the summits which where no longer covered in clouds. I certainly will always remember that first look at Fitz Roy under the moon from the shores of a lake. Another unforgettable strike by the grace of nature. After I woke Sabine up immediately, we spent some time just looking at the scenery before we started our hike to a location we explored the day before, to arrive there at dawn where I finally set up my tripod for the first time during the trip. And the landscape I was shooting was already worth all the efforts of getting all the way there from Austria. And this was just the beginning. Finally all in all I guess we spent about ten days up in the areas around El Chaltén, of course also paying attention to Cerro Torre, the wildlife and all the other fantastic views and details in the park always guided by the unmistakeable shape of Fitz Roy.

On its way straight into the rising sun.

At first appearance the fjell looks pretty barren, but when you get closer you will discover its beauty full of colors, details and lots of water everywhere.

… and covered with a thin layer of soil and numerous types of moss, lichen and other plants.
Since we experienced heavy rainfalls all days long, but still moderate temperatures we didn’t care about the water from above. In fact the conditions were great to take some images there and to bring out all the rich colors we found there. So we grabbed our rain gear and explored and hiked around in the park for countless hours.

Lots of clover can be found everywhere around the creek.

No doubt, birds are actually modern dinosaurs ;)

A really small scale wildlife image. In web resolutions this is actually rather a landscape shot ;)

The green of the summer in Lower Austria.

An other shot showing a bull on this particular ridge you could already see in my first set.

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