The Dolomites, a photographers paradise.

It's been a few months since I led my very first two Dolomites photo tours, which I was absolutely delighted to sell out. Leading up to the trips it was hard not to be excited, I had been to the Dolomites in October 2017 with my good pals Johnny Baird and Felix Sproll. It really was the trip of a lifetime, A bucket list location that I thought to myself i'd never in my wildest dreams ever photograph there never mind run photo tours there.

Leading up to the trips it was as exciting as it gets, but as the trips grew closer one or two nerves crept in, its normal for a trip, especially an international one because you want/need so many things to come together. Your going away with people you've never been away with before, most of the time they are strangers to each other also, but you also want the accommodation to be nice and the weather to be perfect. About one hour into the first of the two tours any nerves I had had completely disappeared, I had amazing clients, it's maybe a cliche to say but I guess its easy as we are all there as like minded people and our number one reason for being there is to photograph amazing landscapes. Once you land, collect the minibus and get on the road the real fun starts, and when we drive along the auto strada (Italian motorways) for a few hours we start to get closer to the mountain roads, that's when the ohhhhh's, ahhhhhh's and wooooooow's start, that's when you know its going to be amazing week.

Although much photographed, Lago di Braies is still one of my favourite locations to shoot. It can take a long time for the boats to line up, but when it does its just perfect.

I had decided on running the tour in October becauseI knew there would be less people than in summer but also to capture the Autumn colours. I definitely think it was the right decision, we came across very few other photographers, the Autumn colours were stunning and the contrast in the weather between the two trips couldn't have been any different, for the best possible reasons!!! The two trips were back to back with two days break in between. The first trip was full of calm weather with the most amazing light and colour, the second trip was again, full of calm weather but less colour (although we still got some beautiful colour) and more mood with an absolutely amazing cloud inversion at Tre Cime.

Me after having a little dip in the freezing Lago di Braies after one of my clients dropped their polarising filter into the water

Being in the Dolomites, where in my opinion is the best mountains in the world to photograph, its easy to forget just how good the Autumn colours are because the landscape is so good, sometimes it doesn't matter if a shot has a touch of Autumn colour or not. The shot above, in the middle of the day is one of my favourite shots I have from the Dolomites, the blue sky, Autumn colours and reflections just compliment each other so much. I know a lot of people don't like shooting with a fully blue sky, and I understand it, but I definitely am a big believer in shooting to the conditions and I think this particular shot above has all the ingredients to make a nice, simple blue sky image.

Coffee and photography... A perfect match

One of the best moments on the first trip was when we were driving through a mountain pass to shoot sunset, when we spotted a fox just chilling on the side of the road, very casually, we decided to turn back and boy did this little divil put on a display for us for about 20 minutes. We managed to get loads of photos and video of him/her, I'm not sure, but I'm going to say "she". She was so tame, keeping her distance but happy to playfully wander around, to give you an idea how close we were, this shot was shot at 85mm.

Luca and myself

There are no words that can truly describe how much I love this place in the Dolomites, just look at that view!!! You can actually rent out and stay in some of these huts, the beauty about this place is that, the path to it is private so its a nice easy one hour walk to get here, the bit of effort really makes it worth while. Five minutes from here, there's a little hut, Sanon hut it's called, its owned by a new found friend of mine Luca. It has a little bar that serves the nicest beers and wines but also a restaurant which is reservation only, and yes, you have to walk the private road to it.

Breakfast cheers

During sunrise here on the second trip, Luca pulled out all the stops. While shooting sunrise he sent his drone over the hill to us with 7 scarfs for us, an hour later we arrived at his hut and he made us the most amazing bacon, eggs and fried potatoes!! We then washed that all down with 10am beers... just look at that view.

Another example of last light in the Dolomites, the glow that touches the tops of the peaks as the sunsets really is an amazing sight to see, although the sun has disappeared from our view, the mountains 1,000/2,000m up manage to hold onto that light just a little longer.

Photobombed by cows... When we arrived here it was just us, the church and the mountains, then some cows decided to bolt down the field and join the party, luckily we managed to get some shots before they arrived. What a place though, one of the most iconic shots of the Dolomites. The colours we so well scattered with just the right amount of light hitting.

 

This is a shot of the same church from my reci trip in October 2017, the same place but its amazing how much mood the clouds, and snow adds. You can also see, even though they were shot only a couple of days away from being exactly one year apart, the shot from last year has slightly better colours on the trees. This is definitely one of my favourite places to shoot in the Dolomites.

Another example of more mood, of my three trips to the Dolomites so far, this particular day was "the worst". This is actually the same location (different time), as the blue sky image reflection shot near the start of the blog, except its facing the opposite way. It just goes to show how different weather can make these places look so good in totally different ways. This shot was from my trip in 2017, it was by far the worst day of the week on that particular visit, and if you take a look at the shot below, this was actually taken on the same day and was "the worst" sunset of the trip.

Fast forward to 2018 again, to the same location as the shot above and see, clear skies but plenty of low hanging mist, or so we thought, it was actually smoke from a massive forest fire the day before in the area and because we had a high pressure weather system the smoke just lingered in the valley, creating this amazing scene of layers. Thankfully nobody was hurt or injured in the fire and although it created an amazing scene to photograph, I do hate to think what plants and wildlife were harmed in the fire.

Lastly, I saved the best for last... The image below was from the first of the two photo tours and what a sight it was! We hiked for two hours to our final sunset location, the weather was beautiful, a little hazy for my liking but we still had 2 hours until sunset. We got in position nice and early with the sun shining right at us, it was fairly pleasant in terms of temperature, 20oC maybe, but as the sun started to drop, the temperature dropped, the haze started to clear and BOOOOOM, what you see below happened.

I must admit, I wasn't expecting such a display, there was about 20 photographers in total shooting here, but there was so much room for everyone to shoot and the craic and banter between all of us was just class! From who I spoke to there, there was our group from Ireland, guys from the UK, China, Italy, America, Africa and South Korea, it was great to see everyone chatting and having a laugh, then there was the screams of excitement when the colour hit everything around us.

And then there was the same area, from the second photo tour, it couldn't have been anymore different, but it couldn't have been anymore epic!!

Yoga at 2,000m

 For this spot, we actually park at the same place as the image above, but the two locations are actually a 3 hour hike apart. We had clear blue skies above us when we got here, but its only when we  parked the car we realised that we were above the most amazing cloud inversion I, I think any of us had ever seen.

A drone shot after the cloud engulfed us for the rest of the day

What we managed to get just before the cloud eventually engulfed us was the stuff of dreams. The shot below, I had seen it several times on social media but never with an incoming cloud inversion like this. That's me on that tiny ledge in the foreground. I had set up my camera, as did everyone else, Tony Finnegan kindly pressed my shutter button when I ran down and got into place. I stood there for about 5 minutes so everyone could get the shots, I'm a firm believer in only adding a person to the scene if it adds scale to an image. I think this photo definitely screams scale, I can't begin to tell you what was going through my head as I stood here but it was some feeling. After about 10 minutes, the cloud came in and all the mountains were covered and they were never seen again, EVER!!!
About 10 minutes after sunset it actually started to clear and actually created more beautiful mood, but it was hard to top the mood we had below, it was just an amazing experience to witness.

So I think its fair to say, The Dolomites really is a photographers paradise. It's definitely my favourite place in the world to shoot.

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https://www.bglandscapetours.ie

Thank you very much for reading

Bernard