Mountain and ski photography — the ground, the light, and the record.
Click on the Mountain was a photography contest held in Courmayeur. It ran ten editions between 2009 and 2018 and has not run since. Cold Light publishes at its former address and is independent of it. How this works.
What is going wrong
Why does the snow come out grey?
Because a reflected-light meter is calibrated for a mid grey and a snowfield is roughly five times brighter than one. The meter is not broken.Why do I nail the white balance some days and miss it entirely on others?
Because snow in sun and snow in open shade are lit by two different light sources, and one frame can contain both. No shade on a south face.The light has gone flat and everything looks like a white wall. Now what?
Overcast over snow removes the shadows that describe shape; the treeline is usually the nearest thing that puts them back. Flat light in Val Veny.Why does the camera say the battery is dead at the top of the lift and half full in the bar?
A cold lithium-ion cell has not lost its charge; it has lost the voltage to deliver it. A cold battery is not a dead battery.Why do my photographs make a steep slope look flat?
Mostly it is where you stood, and only then what lens you used. Distance decides the lens.Where am I actually allowed to stand?
A photographer working a slope is a stationary obstacle facing uphill, and the rules of the piste are written for the person moving. Standing in the fall line.What was Click on the Mountain, and is it still running?
A photography contest in Courmayeur. Ten editions, 2009 to 2018. It is not running. The record of ten editions.How were the photographs actually judged?
By named themes that changed over the run, by a jury of experts — and for one early edition, by public vote. The 2011 public vote, and the juries that replaced it.Why did every edition happen in the same few weeks of the year?
Sun angle and snowpack leave a window at Courmayeur that is only a few weeks wide. Why it was always March.Which ground did the contest actually use?
From the lift-served sectors above Chécrouit out to Cresta d'Arp, and later by helicopter and Skyway Monte Bianco to glacier terrain. Cresta d'Arp to Punta Helbronner.
Recently
-
Click on the Mountain, 2009–2018: The Record of Ten Editions Under Monte Bianco
Ten editions reconstructed year by year from the contest's own archived pages and the press that covered it — five teams in the first year and four thereafter, a book that fell from thirty photographs to five and climbed back to ten, and a tenth edition after which nothing further was published.
-
Four Teams, Three Days, One Book: What Click on the Mountain Was and How It Worked
A ski school in Courmayeur invented a contest with one governing rule — that nothing about the route could be decided in advance — and then spent ten winters building an apparatus of guides, helicopters and deadlines around it.
-
Standing in the Fall Line: Where a Photographer Can Legally and Safely Work on a Snow Slope
Click on the Mountain ran its tenth and final edition in March 2018, is not running, and cannot be taken part in — and this page, which organises nothing and sells nothing, sets out instead what the FIS Code of Conduct, Italy's D.Lgs. 40/2021 and the Swiss avalanche record oblige of a person who has stopped on a snow slope, is facing uphill, and cannot be seen over a convex roll.
-
Belluscio, Giordan, Bellini: The 2011 Public Vote, and the Juries That Replaced It
The Internet Archive holds four identical captures of the 2011 homepage, and on each sits a public leaderboard reading Belluscio, Giordan, Bellini — set here against the published rules of the juries that decide mountain photography now.
-
The Meter Is Not Broken: Metering Snow When the Subject Lasts a Second and a Half
Reflected-light meters do exactly what ISO 2720 and ISO 12232 specify, which is why a snowfield comes back grey — and why the correction is not one number but a range that runs from about +0.3 EV to about +2.2 EV before the light has changed at all.
-
No Shade on a South Face: Alpine Contrast, and the Two Colour Temperatures of a Single Slope
Computes where the sun actually stands above Courmayeur in early March, and shows why one white balance cannot serve snow lit by a 5200 K sun and snow lit by 9000 K sky in the same frame.
-
When the Mountain Disappears: Flat Light in Val Veny, and the Treeline That Saves the Frame
The commonest condition in the Alps and the least written about — cloud reduces the sky to one azimuthally uniform source, the shading gradient that described the slope stops existing, and what a camera has left to hold is a tree.
-
A Cold Battery Is Not a Dead Battery: Lithium-Ion, Dew Point, and Camera Failure Below Freezing
A cold lithium-ion cell reports empty under load and recovers in a pocket — Nikon's own reference guide states that "once warmed, cold batteries may recover some of their charge" — and the same misread temperature runs through the plastic-bag ritual, the snow on the body, and the word weather-sealed.
-
Distance Decides the Lens: Why a Forty-Degree Face Reads Flat at 200mm
Works the angular arithmetic of a forty-degree face and finds that the terrain sets the subject distance, the focal length follows from it, and the same slope photographed twenty degrees off the fall line draws at sixteen degrees.
-
Cresta d’Arp to Punta Helbronner: The Ground Click on the Mountain Actually Used
Sector by sector across the ground ten editions worked — altitude, aspect, the hour the light arrives, and what the institutional record says about the hazards. Not a route guide.
-
Why It Was Always March: Sun Angle, Snowpack, and the Narrow Window Courmayeur Gives
Eight of the ten editions carry a date, six of them fall inside sixteen days of calendar, and the reason is computable — at 45.79° N a forty-degree north-facing face gets no direct sun at solar noon until 10 March.
-
Reading the Frame: Vittorio Sella’s Alpine Plates, and the Oldest Problem in Snow Photography
Sella carried large-format plates across the Alps, the Caucasus and the Karakoram, and met the identical exposure problem — with an emulsion far more sensitive to blue than to red and no meter at all.