The beauty of lonely places
Just a year and a half ago, in September, we were visiting Dolomites mountains for the first time, 2 weeks worth of landscape photography (you ca also read Muntii Dolomiti – O Calatorie fotografica). We were there in September 2017, not at peak season, but you could still find tourists everywhere. The trip turned out to be quite nice, with many nice photographs and great things to learn, but we left with a huge regret. We didn’t get to see Alpi di Siusi. We had 4 days reserved for the Compaccio plateau but it rained the entire time, so we missed the chance to see much of the area.
Fast forward one year and a half, Easter break was approaching and we were dying to get out, in the middle of nature, thus decided it would be a good idea to return to Dolomites and visit Seiser Alm, hoping for a better chance to do some landscape photography.
Alpi di Siusi is the largest high-altitude Alpine meadow in Europe, and from here you can admire a large number of mountain groups: the Sella Group, Sciliar national park, the Rosengarten group and the Marmolada. When we were here in September 2017, the plateau was packed with people bicycling, hiking, running, enjoying the fresh air, green lawns and chirping birds.
To our surprise, when we arrived in April, the entire place was in maintenance, with no tourists or people wondering around the resort, just us, the deers and some locals that resisted the harsh winter. In the first day arriving here the weather was really pleasant, we enjoyed the sunset, the rays of sun and just seating on the grass. When we woke up the next morning, surprise…. everything was covered in snow.
There isn’t anything more pleasant than witnessing the unpredictability of nature at high altitudes. Today it can be sunny and 15 degrees Celsius, tomorrow it can be raining, snowing, cloudy or windy.
The changing weather, that offered us a totally different change of scenery, coupled with having the place all to ourselves, gave us such a nice feeling of a virgin landscape, looking forward to being documented exactly as it is. This was the kind of landscape photography trip that we’ve been dreaming to have, that will put our creativity to play and will help us get home with a rested head, ready for new challenges.
Our goal for this trip was to explore as much of the area as possible and to always have the camera with us, no matter the weather, the time of day, the light and just trying to find decent compositions and subjects to shoot every single day. And this is exactly what we did.
I don’t know if any of the images shot in these 6 days in Seiser Alm are portfolio worthy, but the experience itself, getting the camera out, trying to compose an image, being in the middle of the nature, surrounded by mountains made us appreciate so much a lonely landscape.
Although it is nice to see people moving, bicycling or just admiring the landscape, it’s so liberating to experience nature all by yourself, without any distractions and noise. A lonely nature can reveal itself even simpler and more beautiful than a crowded one, at least this is how it felt for us.
How about you? Do you enjoy traveling to lonely places, or you like having people around when you go to your landscape photography trips? Love to hear your experiences.
