Sanctuary

Sanctuary
Alpe Di Siusi - November 2017
In a few decades, when there is nothing else to destroy, people will remember how places like these were surprisingly real.
Story:
First photo of my trip to the Dolomites in November 2017, made during sunrise, in the incredible Alpe di Siusi plateau. This place is one of the largest high altitude alpine meadows in Europe, located at 1600-2300 meters high. This is an extremely well protected natural reserve area, where private cars can’t enter between 9am and 5pm.
The classic landscape image of this place usually shows luscious green valleys, but snow greeted me with full strength during my trip, so you can now see an unusual photo of this place fully dressed in white clothes and warm sunrise light. I arrived to the place at 3 am, absolutely exhausted, and most small roads were covered with snow, making it very difficult to find a parking place. Finally managed to park at the Hotel Icaro and stayed there during the night. I would like to thank the hotel owner, who approached us the next day, letting us stay there with the camper after we explained our purpose. All hotels in the area are closed in November, and we never ever leave any garbage outside the camper, so it was great to have the possibility to stay in such gorgeous place. Sleeping on the spot would be the only way to shoot sunrise and sunset, under extremely cold temperatures, with unfortunately overcast dull skies. I really wanted to get good shots of this place so decided to stay one more night there, and so we were finally greeted with a very intense sunrise coming from behind the Sassolungo mountains.
Sony a7R + Tamron 28-75 f2.8
Focal length: 30mm
Exposure: 2 seconds
ISO: 100
Aperture: f11
Nisi Medium Grad 4 stops
FLM CP30 XL tripod + CB38-FTR ballhead
Wireless remote shutter
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