We spent eight days in the Dolomites on our photography workshop organized by Wild Photography Holidays. The workshop was led by James Rushforth (a Brit), assisted by Dougie Cunningham (a Scot). There were 11 workshop participants, about half American and half British.
The Dolomites are these amazing light-colored craggy mountains in the northeast of Italy. They are not as high as the Alps, but they are far more impressive. We thought this the prettiest mountain areas we'd ever seen, whether standing in a mountain meadow, pass, or high up.
We've included three panoramic videos below because a single photo can't begin to capture the feeling of being surrounded by these mountains.
We took 1,936 pictures in just eight days, so this blog entry is just an overview. We'll work on a selection of our best pictures and publish a second blog entry of workshop output later on.
This section of Italy seems much like Switzerland, with Tyrolian architecture and many signs that are in both Italian and German. More than once, we were greeted for breakfast with "Guten Tag" instead of "Buongiorno."
We stayed in two small but excellent hotels, with modern rooms much larger than the European average. The first four days were spent in Alpe di Suisi (also called Seiser Alm), a small collection of hotels in a high mountain meadow area. We stayed at the Hotel Seelaus, and had a beautiful view from our balcony of the Punta Satner formation.
The last four days were spent in the delightful town of Cortina d'Ampezzo, surrounded by high rock walls on all four sides, and one of the sites (along with Milan) hosting the 2026 Winter Olympics. We stayed at the Hotel Villa Alpina.
We'd arrived at the height of the fall colors. Much of the yellow came from larches, which resemble evergreens but have needle-like leaves that turn yellow before dropping. There were also deciduous trees adding to the fall splendor
Each day we would have breakfast at the hotel then go out for the day, typically stopping at mountain passes, lakes, meadows, or small towns where the group would spread out and take pictures for an hour or two.
While traveling between hotels, we stopped by a moving World War I graveyard still lovingly maintained by local residents.
A couple times we rode gondolas up to high mountain viewpoints.
For now, we'll just share some highlight images from our week in the Dolomites below. As mentioned above, we'll add a more detailed blog entry about our photo workshop later.
The Dolomites - so wild and yet so accessible to both hikers and skiers. We said to each other we'd like to come back on our own someday.
Next up: 5 days in Venice, then 4 in Tuscany. That'll be covered in another blog post in a week or two.
Breathtaking scenery, and delightfully composed photos. We were in Switzerland this summer and your photos dropped me right back into that splendor!