My personal Blog
Some of my latest photographic excursions
Croda da Lago
At the end of October (on the 27th to be precise) I went to the Dolomites and hiked up the slopes of the Tofana di Rozes
to shoot the Croda da Lago: a little chain which looks like an arête with all its jagged little peaks. It was a beatiful autumnal day, the
larches had turned into all shades of green, orange, and red. My German Shepherd Halyss and I enjoyed the solitude and the grandeur of the
landscape, the sunshine and the exertion. Still, from a photographic point of view, I thought that there was something missing, the icing
on the cake so to speak: literally, a little bit of snow on the top of those beautifully coloured trees and peaks.
So, you might imagine how happy I was to be able to get back to the very same spot 16 days later (on the 12th of November) after a fresh snowfall.
I thought the larches would still be wearing their magnificent late autumn livery but I was wrong. As I walked up the slopes I realized that fall
had already and abruptly given way to winter up there.
The pictures taken from the very same spots, just 16 days apart - 380 hours - look very different. Nature and time play their game on the landscape
and no amount of Photoshopping can ever measure up to their gracious indifference. Once again you take home the humbling and liberating lesson
that as a nature photographer your task it to bear testimony: "improving" is futile.
Spiz San Piero
The weather forecast had promised a beautiful autumnal day, with clear skies and high visibility. It was a chance difficult to
pass up. There is this minor summit in the Zoldo Valley, the Spiz San Piero, which affords a beautiful view of the south side of
Mount Pelmo, provided that there is very good visibility because the mountain is quite far away to the North. That was our objective.
I woke up very early, drove to the Cibiana Fork and then Halyss (my sweet female working German Shepherd) and I hiked up first to
the Ciavazoles Fork to get a good view of the Bosconero Group and some water from the brook which is near the fork and usually not dry even
during the summer and early autumn.
Having drunk plenty of clear cold high mountain water we came back down a little, took another trail and reached the La Calades Fork.
We then traversed around the slopes of the Spiz San Piero and, with a final push along a steep unmarked trail, we eventually scrambled to the summit (2084 mt).
The view was everything I had expected, magnificent all around. To the North rose the solitary Mount Pelmo, which in the vernacular
is also called "God's Chair", an appropriate name, given its dimension, shape, and isolation.
We met nobody that day, the mountain was literally ours if only for a few hours.
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