My time in the Dolomites was nearly over. I’d hiked the most well-known trails and photographed the range’s most famous peaks and valleys. The muscles in my legs ached from almost daily climbs, but I was content and deeply satisfied with all that I had seen and done.

August 2018, single shot, additional exposures for highlights, focal length 70 mm, aperture f/11, shutter speed 0.8 second, ISO 64, tripod.

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On my last day, I again ventured into Tre Cime Natural Park. It’s one of the loveliest places in the Dolomites, and I wanted to see it once more before I packed up to fly back home. It was nearly sunset by the time I reached my destination, a rocky ledge overlooking the Refugio Lavaredo, a lodge near the base of the Tre Cimes.

From that vantage point, looking down a rocky ledge toward the imposing peaks in the distance, the refugio appeared tiny and insignificant, a diminutive bulwark against nature. Though it seemed very far away, I could see lights in the windows of the refugio, and I knew that for a few hours, it would be a home to someone, a place of welcome amid the harsh, rocky terrain of the mountains. It struck me then, looking at the savagely beautiful peaks of the Dolomites, that sometimes this is all we need in life: a small refuge, a place of comfort, in what is sometimes a savage and unforgiving world.

My family and I had spent several days hiking through the Dolomites and it was near the end of our trip. We’d undoubtedly hiked many miles, but it seemed that we’d barely begun to explore the region. It was rich with history and natural beauty and I felt that I could have stayed and wandered its winding paths for months without ever seeing everything the mountains had to reveal.

August 2018, single shot, additional exposures for highlights, focal length 14 mm, aperture f/11, shutter speed 1/24, ISO 64, tripod.

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We weren’t the only ones who were fascinated by the region. For most of the trip, we shared hiking trails with travelers from around the world who explored just as eagerly as we did. You get used to the crowds as a travel photographer — after all, they’re drawn by the same beauty that attracted me.

But towards the end of our trip, I found myself alone on a hike to the Torre di Toblin. It was early in the day, so perhaps most people were not awake yet, but I had the area to myself. It’s a stark, desolate expanse, devoid even of plant life. I had the sense that I was the only living being in that part of the Dolomites, witnessing the earth before the creation of life. And it wasn’t a distressing thought; it was oddly peaceful to look out over the world as it might have appeared before it was populated with all of the earth’s creatures.

The sun rose higher and far below the peaks of the Torre di Toblin, life began to stir.

It’s a beautiful place, this part of Italy. It’s easy to forget yourself here. You can become so entranced by the spectacular natural beauty off far-off peaks that you miss things close at hand. You don’t see them at first, the strange gouges that pockmark many of the trees. In other places, hikers occasionally kick up bullet casings and bits of barbed wire among the wildflowers.

August 2018, single shot, additional exposures for highlights, focal length 17 mm, aperture f/11, shutter speed 1/13, ISO 64, tripod.

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They are grim reminders of a dark part of the region’s history. From 1914 to 1918, a bitter — if little-known — battle raged here between the forces of Italy and Austria-Hungary. The terrain itself — marked by soaring, 3000 meter peaks — was treacherous, as was the weather, and men died of hypothermia as easily as they died from gunfire. The casualties were enormous — Italy alone lost more than half a million men among the craggy spires of the Dolomites.

Few people remember that fighting now, a century later. A popular spot for hikers, Cinque Torri is now lined with trails and signs pointing in one direction or another. Looking out over the Dolomites on a summer day, it’s almost impossible to imagine the horror that once took place here. The only sounds are birds and the voices of fellow hikers, and wildflowers bloom from a land once scarred by battle. It’s hard to imagine that that the region was ever anything other than surpassingly lovely.

I call this photograph the Valley of Peace. I chose that name because now – one hundred years after the guns fell silent – it’s a place of serenity. Once, countries fought over this land. Now, people from around the world come here for the sole purpose of admiring its beauty. This particular spot is a reminder to me that for all of the harm that humans may sometimes do, we still possess the ability to be deeply moved by the natural world and to look out over creation with a profound sense of wonder.

As a travel photographer, my work is often strictly planned. I research locales and book trips months in advance. I plan my itineraries well before I leave for a trip, so that I’m sure to include all of the well-known sites and scenic spots that I want to photograph. My travels take me to beautiful, historic, and beloved places, but I sometimes wonder if I spend so much time focused on work that I don’t get to fully appreciate the places I visits. I’m a lifelong traveler, but I sometimes forget to simply wander.

August 2018, panorama from 3 vertical shots, additional exposures for highlights, focal length 16 mm, aperture f/14, shutter speed 30 seconds, ISO 31, tripod, ND 5-stop filter.

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On my recent trip to the Dolomites with my family, I decided to spend less time focused on work. My family was with me, after all, and it was their holiday as much as it was mine. I resolved to spend more time simply enjoying the place and taking in the natural beauty of the region than being focused on getting a great photograph. I decided I would wander.

This part of Italy almost compels you to wander. From the lovely Val Gardena Valley to the jagged peaks and spires of the Dolomites themselves, the region begs to be explored. So I put my itinerary aside and my family and I took to the trails and ski lifts. In winter, the area is a popular ski resort, but in warmer months, when the mountainsides are green and dotted with wildflowers, the lifts are full with hikers and explorers.

It was during our ambling through the countryside that I found a beautiful peak, which I later learned was called Brunecker Turm. I found it by accident during a day spent hiking with my family. It was one of those fortuitous accidents that happen sometimes when you travel, especially if you simply allow yourself to wander. You turn a corner or hike to the top of a hill and you’re greeted with one of the most beautiful things you’ve ever seen.

As it happened, a winding path led up to Brunecker Turm. I hadn’t planned on making photographs that day, but the scene was so picturesque and evocative that I couldn’t resist. That winding path up to a Dolomite peak seemed to me to represent not only my meandering path that day, but the varied paths that each of us takes through life. On that day, an early summer morning in Italy, I was profoundly grateful that mine took me where it did.

Sometimes beauty is deceiving. I’ve often found myself drawn to a particular place because photos and descriptions of it highlighted its beauty, only to find that reaching the place came with certain difficulties or even dangers. I’ve found myself perched on the edge of cliffs to capture a perfect image of the sea or traveling into the remote reaches of the desert, far away from civilization, to photograph a long-abandoned city.

August 2018, panorama from 3 horizontal shots, focus stacking for foreground, additional exposures for highlights, focal length 14 mm, aperture f/11, shutter speed 1/10, ISO 64, tripod.

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In the Dolomites, I was once again drawn to a deceptively beautiful and serene location. Cinque Torri, another of the range’s famously scenic locations, was my next destination during my family vacation this summer. Cinque Torri didn’t even require a lengthy hike — it was accessible via a ski lift, and I sailed up over the mountain terrain, gear in hand, ready to photograph another remarkable Dolomite landscape.

The view from Cinque Torri was as beautiful as I anticipated. Some of the peaks in this region soar to more than 10,000 feet before plunging down into rocky valleys lined with wildflowers.

But the stunning views from Cinque Torri also revealed a dark and violent history. It was here, during World War I, that the forces of Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire clashed in some of the fiercest fighting of the war. A short distance from the peaks that enchanted me were trenches, tunnels, and barbed wire where fighting once raged. These remnants of war are now an open-air museum, completely harmless, but they felt ominous to me, reminders of the terrible atrocities that humans can inflict on one another.

I settled on a location to photograph, with the great peaks in the background. In the foreground, I focused on the vivid purple wolfsbane flowers that grow in the Dolomites. Like Cinque Torri, the flower is beautiful but deceiving; they are lovely to look at but they harbor a deadly poison, and it struck me that the flowers were a perfect metaphor for Cinque Torri. I got my photographs and started back down the trails, pondering the nature of beauty.

The Dolomites continued to charm me. My family and I spent days in the mountains, and each day revealed more enchanting, tucked away places. After a few days in the mountains, I found what must be one of the most ethereally beautiful places in the entire range, the Lago di Sorapis.

August 2018, additional exposures for highlights, focal length 14 mm, aperture f/11, shutter speed 1/15, ISO 64, tripod.

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Getting to Sorapis requires a three- or four-hour hike from the parking lot all the way to the lake. It’s not particularly difficult, but there are places along the way where the drop is quite steep and the view — while beautiful — might be a bit too vertiginous for some. But these places are few and for most of the hike, I was too distracted by the incredible views to give much thought to falling.

It’s a spectacular place — I was surrounded by mountains for virtually the entire hike and the air was crisp with the scent of evergreen. I wouldn’t call it untraveled, but the hike to Lago di Sorapis is generally less populated than some of the other trails in the Dolomites. Surrounded by the region’s natural beauty and having the trail virtually to ourselves gave the hike a serene quality and I was in no hurry to leave.

At the end of the long hike, we reached our reward: the mystical blue waters of Lago di Sorapis. The lake is a milky, powdery blue, and its color, combined with its relatively remote location, makes you feel that you’ve wandered into a setting from a child’s storybook. I timed the hike to that I would arrive at the lake shortly before sunset, and the dimming sunlight gave the lake an even more magical quality. Though the hike had been long and I was tired, seeing the otherworldly beauty of the lake left me invigorated and I was grateful for the experience.

The Dolomites have inspired and intrigued travelers for centuries, or possibly for millennia, as they are believed to be more than 200,000 years old.

August 2018, additional exposures for highlights, focal length 17 mm, aperture f/11, shutter speed 0.4 seconds, ISO 64, tripod.

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They are lovely and quite unexpected, as they don’t look like what you imagine the Alps to be. Most people picture snow-capped peaks and vast seas of evergreen when they think of the Alps, but the Dolomites are different. When touched by early morning light or sunset, they seem to glow with a deep rose hue. At such moments they seem out of place, like formations that belong in the Badlands of the American West.

But no matter how the sunlight hits them, they’re beautiful. From any angle at any time of day, the Dolomites’ formidable peaks have the power to leave you awestruck. The famed architect Le Corbusier described the Dolomites as “the most beautiful architectonic work in the world.”

I could hike the many trails through the Dolomites endlessly, enchanted all over again with each new view. But I knew I wanted to photograph the famous Tre Cime de Lavaredo, three peaks that are one of the most famous parts of the range. I wanted to photograph Tre Cime at sunset, when I believed the light would be the beautiful. This required some effort. To reach the park from Cortina, it requires a drive of 40 minutes, and then a hike of another 40 minutes to reach the best viewing point. I was determined to get there in time to see the sun set over those striking formations.

The park permits you to spend one night in the park in a tent if you have nowhere to go and if you leave in the morning, so I decided that we would bring a tent and make a night of it, since we would be there at nightfall, anyway. We reached the best vantage point shortly before sunset, and I began to set up my gear. As the sun began to descend toward the horizon, I realized that all the extra effort was worth it. Tre Cime was stunning in the late afternoon light, like a landscape from another world. The time of day that Da Vinci referred to as “the golden hour” was a truly remarkable time to see Tre Cime. No one spoke; it was a moment that seemed to demand silence, reverence. I took my photos then sat in wonder as twilight settled over the Dolomites.

This photo received following awards:
* FEP Photographer of the Year Awards 2019 – Merit Award – Landscape
* MIROC circuit 2019 (4th MIROC Exhibition Edenvale 2019, South Africa) – Salon Honorable Mention