Outdoor Photography How To

Taking a Peak
Douglas Croft captured this incredible snowy vista from the top of the Aiguille du Midi, high above Chamonix, France.

“We had been in the Alps for two weeks, but this is one of the highest vertical ascent cable cars in the world, taking us up to 12,602 feet, and now we were above the Alps,” Croft says about the location. “We hit a perfect day and the views were a bit overwhelming. When I saw the climbers descending the snow ridge, my first thought was, those guys are nuts, but I knew I could use them to give a sense of the grand scale of the place.”

The angle of the shot is looking over the French Alps into Switzerland, and you can even catch a glimpse of the Matterhorn. Croft captured the image with a Nikon D7000 and a Nikkor 18-300mm lens at 18mm, f/8, ISO 200, 1/200 second.

“There were two big challenges with this shot: deciding which way to point the camera, and letting go of the railing long enough to hit the shutter. I was standing on a metal grating 2,800 meters above Chamonix and my fear of heights and edges was in high gear.”

You'll definitely want to check out a large version of this image here. You can see more of Croft’s work at douglascroftimages.com.