Making landscape images is fraught with many challenges even in familiar areas . The photographer is always at the mercy of the weather conditions. But around home he can return to the chosen and often familiar locations when conditions may be optimal.

These photographic challenges are exacerbated while one is travelling. We are truly influenced by the prevailing conditions. As we are usually on the move, it requires a lot of luck to be able to create great images. These situations have to occur while we are passing through because we can seldom return or wait for those atmospheric conditions that we wish to experience.

Nevertheless, I sometimes get lucky. At other times, when confronted with an amazing landscape, I have to get creative.

Here are a few landscape photos from our most recent trip in Europe.

T_22_0007 If the skies are clear, I may get some images from the air at either takeoff or landing.

This photo showing the patterns in the landscape was made as we approached Munich Airport.

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Luck favours those who are prepared. Understanding weather conditions helped. After an evening rainstorm and sensing that the sun was going to shine, I walked onto the road above our airbnb in the Austrian Tyrol and got this photo.

T_22_0104Early morning on church on Bled Island,Lake Bled, Slovenia Visiting this region of Slovenia was planned, with research telling me about this iconic setting at Lake Bled.

Getting up early and driving to this location for sunrise resulted in these images of this island church.

T_22_0107 Knowing where to go helped, but I needed some luck to have an interesting sunrise.

T_22_0150 Looking for a high viewpoint often gives a unique view on a landscape.

I realized that I could get overviews of Lake Bled from Bled Castle, and thus got this photo.

T_22_0135 Doing research before leaving home lead me to this alpine pasture off the beaten path in the Julian Alps of Slovenia.

T_22_0206 Here again a chosen route over Vrsic Pass in north western Slovenia brought me to this location.

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This setting is high in the Dolomites of northern Italy, near Cortina. Research again had pinpointed this location. All we had to do was go up a cable car and hope for decent weather. This is nothing spectacular, but a good composition and post-processing created this scenic.

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Often views from the side of the road offer great views, as in this photo on Livinallongo, northern Italy.

T_22_0538Rainstorm over Sarnen Lake, Obwalden, Switzerland And sometimes I get lucky. As we were driving up to our airbnb, I pulled off the road to photograph this storm over Lake Sarnen in Switzerland.

T_22_0709Matterhorn, Zermatt, Switzerland I knew about this small lake, Riffelsee, and the possibility of photographing the Matterhorn reflected in it. First I needed a clear day with some clouds and then just had to work at finding a good composition.

These are some of the landscape photo that I was able to make. Yet there were a number of locations in which the timing did not work because of the weather conditions or the time of day that I was there.