Fall Colors in the Dolomites

I believe the Dolomites are the most beautiful mountains in the world. Convince me otherwise.

To be honest, I haven’t see the Canadian Rockies or the New Zealand Alps in person, so I might change my mind when I get there, but until I do I’ll stick to my judgment. I will still come back to the Dolomites more often, as it only takes me about four hours of driving to get there. Makes me wonder why I haven’t shot there more often, but I digress.

What’s so great about the Dolomites, at least for us photographers, is that they cover a relatively small geographical area and you can see so many beautiful and different peaks and lakes in a single day, while driving short distances. Many of those can also be photographed from the side of the road, while some require hikes that range from easy to strenuous.

While the Dolomites have something visually stunning to offer in every season (see here for some winter shots, for example) I was blown away by the richness of fall colors I was able to witness on a recent trip I did there with my friend Pedro and a group of photographers from all over the world.

We stayed there for a week and we managed to photograph almost every location we had in mind. We only missed a few, either because of weather conditions or because we could only hike so much per day without killing our legs and backs. That’s just one reason more to be back.

You can see a collection of my best shots here below. I used my Fujifilm X-T3 for all of them, except for the last one, which was shot on 4×5 film, using my newly acquired Linhof view camera. I only shot 10 sheets of film with the latter. It’s a new and complicated instrument for me, takes a lot of time to set up, and I only had one 150mm lens for it (which is a “normal” focal length for that format) so I couldn’t use it whenever the circumstanced required a wide angle or a telephoto. I did have a lot of fun shooting with it, though, so I am definitely going to use it more for landscapes in the future.

If you’d like to come to the Dolomites with me, I am going to be offering a landscape photography workshop there next year. We will visit many of the same locations you see pictured below and possibly more, hoping to find the same colors. Click here to find out more.