After about 6/7 years of leading photography tours I’m embarrassed to admit this is the first trip report I’ve done!
Anyway, I can’t believe that my Dolomites Discovery Photography Tour which was 2 years in the making has already come and gone! Originally the tour was meant to run in September 2020 but because of covid it had to be cancelled.
As it was a Discovery Tour, meaning it was the first tour I’ve run there so this tour was a trial run to see if everything I had planned would work going forward. I have to say, the only thing that I’ll be changing for next years Dolomites Photography Tour will be the accommodation. I underestimated driving within the Dolomites, although distances are short, the roads are narrow, twisty and slow. So where here in Northern Ireland where you could cover 25 miles in about 40 minutes, in the Dolomites you have to double it!
Next year the first half of the trip will be based in Ortesi and the 2nd half we’ll be based in Cortina. That means no more than 45-60 minutes driving to get to locations.
On the first night we arrived we went to the local town to grab a pizza and I noticed in the distance flashes in the sky. After ordering the pizza and coming outside, I checked the sky again and seen the flashes where definitely getting closer which meant the thunderstorm was moving in our direction!
To cut a long story shot, the thunderstorm was definitely moving in our direction, and it was moving directly overhead! I took a few high ISO long exposures to see what I could see and noticed this distant mountain, I find tuned my composition, set the camera onto timelapse mode and just hoped I would get a strike in the direction I pointed, and as you can see success!
Shooting lightning, my advice is always to find a composition you like and hope that eventually a lightning strike happens exactly where you’re shooting. In my case I found a great composition with Langkofel, set the camera to timelapse and just let the camera continue to shoot, and luckily I got an absolute banger of a strike!
70mm, 30 sec at f/8, ISO 400
Everything else about the tour, couldn’t have gone any better, it was really a dream come true from a weather and conditions perspective. We had fantastic weather where it only rained once while we had just left our sunrise location, and every day we where blessed with near perfect sunrises and sunsets. Only one sunset you could call a bust at Lake Carezza due to cloud plus the European drought meant the waters in the lake where very low.
I had a fantastic group with me, 2 Norwegians, 2 English and an Irish man who all put in fantastic effort each day and I’ve no doubt that each have gone home with fantastic images!
Anyway, enjoy the images below, all these images where taken on my September 2022 Dolomites Photography Tour.
My next Dolomites Photography Tour is scheduled for 17th to 24th October 2023
