0:00 Hello folks, good afternoon, morning. Bit of a solo mission today. Going to be heading up to Marmalada in the Dolomites. in the Val Gardena area. Doing it by myself today. Unfortunately, Val is feeling a bit under the weather, bless her. So she's tucked up in bed, getting some much needed rest. So we've had a bit of a slow morning. And yeah, I'm going to head up to Marmalada. Marmalada is the tallest mountain in the Dolomites region. You take a few cable cars up there. It's got a glacier that's there year round. I'm just gonna go have a look really. see if I get some cool photos. I'm hoping the views from the top will be great. I also love taking the cable cars. You
0:46 can all send your prayers and thoughts and feelings to Val and hope she feels better. We've got another, what, three or four days here in the Dolomites before we head back to London. We've got some really cool hikes planned for the next few days. Really looking forward to it. Hopefully Val's feeling a bit better and can come with me then. So hopefully we'll get some cool stuff. I'll chat to you in a bit. This interim level at Marmalada felt completely foreign as a landscape. Almost Martian or lunar to me. Bright blue sky, supported by a foundation of mountains, created a really interesting backdrop for compositions throughout the day. Very cool place. I enjoyed this
1:34 couple and the interesting shape of this building with the orange pieced signs contrasting nicely against the cloudless sky for a very strong composition. To then bring it in a bit tighter and use the triangular shape of the building to frame or segment this shot worked a treat. "Bent some ice. It's a cool spot." This shot with the two people beneath the electricity pole has an almost religious look to it, similar to two people praying beneath a cross. Regardless, the way it towers above the people set
2:23 against the backdrop over the mountains works well and the layers are very satisfying. The top of Marmalada, also known as the roof of the Dolomites, had stunning views whatever way you looked. Just spectacular. This scene caught my eye straight away though. A bird's eye view of a snowplough on a glacier on the top of the Dolomites with a small number of people around to add both scale and a human element just works so well. It almost looks like a little model city that you would build with little figurines or even out of Lego. And as well in the background you've got these sassalungo peaks which are iconic and just add to it nicely. That initial shot was taken at 23mm with my Fujifilm X106, but I felt maybe using the 33mm f/1.4 with my X-T4 might just be what the scene
3:11 called for. There are so many contrasts here for those to see. Colour, the red on the white, size with the snowplough and the human, the idea of you're up a mountain on a glacier but you're sunbathing. Contrast for all to see and I love it. This straight on portrait of Sassalungo is solid. The diverging lines of the slopes to the left and the railings to the right frame the mountain range well. The added compression of the 33mm does some good stuff also. The top area of Marmolada is a multi-leveled structure in and of itself, and even if you don't step outside, it's a fascinating place to explore in its own right. So what I hope you can see is
4:01 through the window is framed, I think it's Sassalungo, and you've got all of the light coming in from this direction, the line from the window down the vein. with the light and it's got a beautifully framed image I think that works really well with the 35mm of the X106 it may even work well with the 16mm I might switch over at the same time I've got the 33mm So essentially a 50mm on the X-T4 and again that's a Sassalungo framed through this window to my right. There's the little snow cloud down below for a bit of
4:47 colour with the ice and framed through the window and the natural light coming through. And it's just very pretty like it's really hard to take a bad photo here. It's also freezing cold in the shelter here compared to outside. I hope you like it. Yeah, the framing and light here is just lovely. Framing has been a big theme of this trip to the Dolomites and it's worked out fairly favourably so far. I'm a big fan of these. This is the top of Marmalada. All this is a
5:32 glacier, which they kind of covered over, probably to protect it. Also a ski field in winter. You can ski all the way down. At about, I think I said 3,400 metres, 3,300 metres. It's still pretty hot up here. And I'm probably burning. It's pretty cool though. I'm not sure which is more blinding, a literal glacier or my pale Irish legs. I hope you've got your sunglasses on, just saying. And just a couple of shots here for the Mammy. With time approaching for the last lift down the slopes and not wanting to
6:18 get stranded at the top of Marmalada, I headed towards the cable car to begin my descent and I got to enjoy some more insane views. Working with the contrasting silhouettes here and reflections of this pair gave me some lovely compositions. These two of the cable car are great as well. The almost retro colours pop so well. I love some of the details too like the phone and the operating buttons. They seem a bit surreal with the background and mountains being at the same level again. Again, window frames coming in clutch today.
7:12 to the person who wrote in their article about going to see the donkeys. Going with Marmalade. Thank you. Donkeys are great. Yeah, you're great, aren't you? In terms of Marmalade, that was really cool. I've also remembered I've got this microphone. Yeah, I really like that. A nice easy day out, not so much hiking needed. and the scenery is incredible. Time of day wasn't amazing being midday and sort of late afternoon but unfortunately the cable car stops like the last descent is at half four so you never really, unless you're in winter, going to get the best lighting conditions unless it's early morning but then again it doesn't even open that early. but still really cool to be at the different levels see the different parts of this area of the dolomites and as i think you can see from the photography i've done on this
8:00 trip so far really enjoying framing the mountains like framing the mountains within windows with people or just the mountains in general That was interesting to add in the sort of ice element as well, the altitude being similar level to the clouds. I think in particular those images of the window frames all lined up in one of the lower levels, one of the highest point, but one of the lower levels of it. And you see the different mountains on the left-hand side and the one at the end and the light coming in as the light got better. It's probably my favorite images from today. Christ, I am melting though. I'm going to go to the car, pull down, go check on Val. Yeah, Marmalade, almost 10,000 feet high and that was pretty cool. But yeah, I need to go because I'm going to sweat to death. The donkeys were a lovely way to end the solo Marmalade excursion and
8:49 an evening with Val soaking up the local Canazze area was very well needed. The following day we set out on what would be one of the bigger photography days on this part of the trip. But first we made a roadside pit stop at Paso Sela to check out the Sassalungo mountain peaks, which I'd spotted yesterday at the top of Marmalade. These may be the most quintessential Dolomites photos I've taken so far on this trip. Iconic mountains, flowery meadows and alpine cows with some really cool cloud
9:34 formations as well. It was a really nice start to the day. We kept on towards our destination for the day's hike which was to be the Cicada Mountain Plateau which meant of course more cable cars. So I think the walk and the hike we're looking to do today is basically going to head towards those and then we're going to wind our way down. I think we're going to wind our way down for a fair bit and then it's like one steep climb back up to here but it should like
10:25 be quite nice and rolling. Through the hills and then there'll be one big back up. Yeah, it's kind of insane everywhere you look. It's just... Postcard. Postcard. Another postcard. Crazy. This day of hiking around Cicada was easily the best day of hiking and photography we had this side of the Dolomites. Incredible scenery wherever you looked. Beautiful flowing fields filled with alpine flowers. Plenty of picture-perfect huts as well. And the odd paraglider too. Fair warning: there will be plenty of photographs of the cicada peaks in this part of the video. Some will be better than others, but there's going to be a
11:12 lot. So just fair warning. This is a pretty good one though. The metal infographic served as a fitting frame for the mountains, while also simplifying the image by removing a bunch of hikers from the foreground of the scene and leaving just a nice number. Ultimately, I'd have liked there to have been maybe just the one hiker, like the one who sat on top, but I was both impatient and unwilling to clone them out, as I'm not a massive fan of cloning things out and that sort of thing. All the same, it came out really well. Now, literally just over to the side of this was one of the coolest things I've seen for a very long time. And it tickles both the aviation side of my brain
11:59 and the photography side of my brain. We'd spotted paragliders earlier that day on the cable car up and when we'd started our hike. But when we spotted this pair preparing to take off, we both knew that we had to wait around to see them take flight. That's something we'd never really seen before. Thankfully, we weren't as impatient this time and it really paid off.
13:15 What a sight, honestly. I've seen some incredible views from flying, but this was just a beautiful, beautiful sight. And it must be so cool for them taking the whole valley with that bird's eye view. So beautiful. So cool. Like I said, there's going
14:00 to be lots of photos of these peaks. The foreground flowers here are a treat. Oh, that's a fun angle. Not pretty bad photos, actually. Gonna go over there. Instead of over there. Capisce? That was a terrible high five, did I get it?
14:45 On a side note, big thanks to Val for being my videographer. I love the time of this trip. She's the best. She's actually getting really good at it too. Refugios have to be one of my favourite things about hiking or walking in the Dolomites, and the fact they all tend to be sat in some of the most
15:33 picturesque places you've ever seen just adds to the fact it'll be some of the best food you've ever had. We made our way towards this particular refugio for a spot of lunch and found pigs, pakas, and scenic playgrounds along the way to name but a few.
16:22 I like these a lot. A bit absurd really as composition. You've got a sandpit, swings, pair of hikers on a trail, and the iconic cicada peaks as the backdrop. Doesn't look real, but it's a really fun composition. The second image is maybe a bit cleaner than the first, but both are really strong images. I like them a lot. Full schnitzel, we kept moving and with some pretty ominous clouds rolling in we decided to change plans. We elected to head down the hill and then take a ski lift back up the valley to where the cable car back down went in the hopes that this was both easier on the legs and quicker to get back just in case they decided to close the cable cars if a thunderstorm rolled in. Which it looked like there was a chance of happening. I'm at the top of the hill. Look at me with my XT4. Are you proposing down the hill? This was unplanned but the aerial views
17:12 were pretty sick. We're glad we took the ski lift back up because the weather changed pretty quickly after that. The valley began to look a lot more ominous once the clouds appeared, that's for sure. On the way back to Canazze, we once again made a little pit stop at Paso Sela for a quick coffee and
17:58 to try capture some of that weather rolling in atop of Sassalungo, which compared to earlier on that day was a lot less sunny and the weather became a lot more unpredictable. How's your evening cappuccino? You gotta do me dirty like that. I'm not really sure how to describe these two images of the man and the digger. Again, a bit surreal but very fun. All he's missing is a high-vis.
18:48 Also, I saw a marmot. A marmot? A marmot? How class is that? Cicada turned out to be such a treat and I came away with some gorgeous shots that I'm really really happy with. The first by Sasolungu early that day stands out as well as the images of the paragliders, the metal infographic with the peaks behind it, not to mention the playground images here too. All of these are portfolio shots, very printable, not a bad day's work at all. Just one big crack across the sky. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my
19:34 nipple. Our last full day of hiking would take us to the highest alpine plateau in the world, beautiful Alpe de Suisse in Val Gardena. This would also turn out to be the hottest day of the trip, and wow was it hot. I'll forever be a bit obsessed with ski lifts in the summer. I know they're there for the winter season,
20:24 but it's genuinely so cool you can use them in the summer too. They make great subjects themselves as well. It was a beautiful sunny day, that's for sure, but the harsh midday light I found quite a challenge to work with. Yeah, I struggled a lot with it, I won't lie. We're in Alpe d'Isouille. Alpe de Souci. And I've just taken out the XT4 and I've swapped the 33mm 1.4 onto it, just because, as you can see,
21:13 everything's kind of far away. I haven't used this lens really at all on this trip. I've been enjoying just using the X106. and the 23mm on that but I think that this might actually be quite useful that extra bit of compression they're seen here in front of us it's quite far away got the cuts and the ends behind and it does a nice job of just bringing everything that bit closer and a bit of compression this was such a nice idea to take out the 33mm to zoom in on things isolate stuff use the compression but while I talked a great game here all the photos I took with that lens were fairly terrible on the day so I opted to stick with the 23mm of the X106
22:00 for the most part. I just wasn't feeling the 33mm on this day even though in theory it should have worked well but that's how it goes sometimes. This was 100% the highlight of Val's day. The girl loves horses and the horses loved her. There's a bonus that they were absolutely stunning too and the dappled light within the trees was lovely to work with. Can you make a friend Val? You're a friendly boy aren't you?
22:52 I feel like this shaky cam makes it feel like you're being chased. Well, we were hiking up and we've seen this lovely scene here. You've got two trees. You've got the Sasalungo peaks. You've got this lovely winding path and with the meadow. So,
23:39 one of the few places we stopped. you can kind of just about get it in with the X106 and the 35mm. It's very tight vertically but I think the best results we'll get will be with the 16mm which is Val has on the X-T4 and they'll appear now. But yeah it's a really nice scene. I like it. I like it a lot. So with the 23mm on the X106 you can just about get it in like it's almost like too perfect whereas the 16mm you obviously get a bit more of everything. I think I prefer this but I think that's
24:24 more likely to be the more useful shot. If we could get like one hiker walking up that would be lovely for a subject but otherwise it's very very pretty. This shot turned out very lovely and I do prefer the 23mm focal length versus the 16mm most of the time but the 16mm leaves room for the composition to breathe in this case whereas the 23mm does not. I wish I'd been more patient with this scene as well and waited for a hiker or two to walk towards us along the path. One in the foreground, one in the background. It would have added a nice bit of human context to the image. It could have also added a bit of colour as well. I'm also not sure why I didn't take a horizontal composition of this scene. Looking at the video, the horizontal arrangement, the landscape, arrangement works really well, but I just didn't do it. Regardless, this is
25:12 a gorgeous spot and I'm really happy with the image that was taken. Maybe I could have improved in some ways. Also, I think later on in the evening, some like sunset lighting on the background could have done worked really well. But still, a lovely spot altogether. This is a cool bus stop. This is a lovely road. This is a cool picnic bench. Once again, the call of the refugio was too strong for our hungry tummies. Another picturesque lunch turned into some stunning photos, but also turned into us having to leave a bit earlier than planned because you could see thunderstorms rolling in. The food was
26:00 really good too. This shot reminds me of the swing set images from yesterday in Cicada. Less people, cleaner image, and I love how it's almost an environmental portrait of the playground itself. The stormy, moody and menacing background of mountains, with the bright, well-lit and innately innocent and cheerful playground in front, all add up to a very striking shot. I'm a really big fan of this composition. 10/10 for me. Really up my street. The pop of red from the parasols here and chairs is really nice too. Not a terrible view for lunch at all. We should get out
26:46 of here. Similarly to yesterday's weather changing, thunderstorms began to loom large on the horizon. So we made our way back towards the cable car to head back home and were treated to some dramatic yet gorgeous lighting conditions once
27:35 again. It's really brilliant. Val wants a wee video. Val. Alpe de Suisse was a gorgeous day out and I'm not gonna lie, I can't remember if that's how you say it or how you pronounce it but I'm gonna commit to that pronunciation for now. But it was a gorgeous day out that threw up some really interesting, fun compositions. This image of
28:22 the path between the two trees, the mountains in the background was really lovely but I think this playground image is contender for man of the match. So you remember how we saw those paragliders up at Cicada and it was one of the coolest things we'd seen in a long time? Well we couldn't get it out of our heads and more specifically Val couldn't get the idea of us having go at paragliding out of her head. So we had to go and it was so so so so cool. Val do you want to tell the people what we're about to go do? They are somewhere in the sky. We're gonna go up. We're gonna go up? Well actually we're gonna
29:08 go down. We're gonna go up and down. Oh there they are! We're gonna go do that? Oh my god wait wait wait let's look at that. Oh that looks like it. Look at the landing area! That's gas! I was a bit afraid of taking my X106 or my X-T4 up with me offline as I wasn't really sure of the setup and how it would work. I wasn't really sure if I needed my hands at all times. So I put a wrist strap on my GoPro, the little Peak Design one, and off we went. In the end, it was actually a great call and the GoPro turned out to be solid for both photo and video. I reckon I probably could have gotten away with taking my
29:56 X-T4 or my X100 VI up, but ultimately, happy I didn't take the risk. The wide angle turned out to be pretty neat and I particularly like the black and white shots. Partly because they're quite moody, partly because I don't know how to... I have no idea how to edit the colours from GoPro RAW images. I just struggled really badly. Won't lie. you want to go somewhere yeah
30:43 oh yeah that's fun oh this is good oh that's a good time yeah great it's great fun But honestly, this was so, so, so sick.
31:30 Yeah, I think this is the closest I've ever gotten to really flying, which says a lot. And it was so cool. What a feeling. What a feeling. Really, really cool. Yep. That's cool. Very, very, very definitely worth it. The guys were so cool and professional that took us up, really knew what they were doing, didn't feel unsafe at any point, constantly talking about what they were doing the whole time. Very fun experience. Would do it again. I even got to get some steep turns in at the end. Apologies for the motion sickness, but... It was insane. Paragliding was really the last thing we did in that trip. We spent the rest of that evening relaxing, soaking in
32:18 the atmosphere, before we had to head back to reality the following day. Honestly, what a trip. I'm so glad the Dolomites lived up to the hype and easily went beyond it. I came away from this trip with some insane photos. I got to really experience a new environment that I hadn't spent any time in before. If you haven't checked out part one of our Dolomites adventure, please do so. Some of my favourite work I've ever done on this channel, some of my favourite photographs I've ever taken are in that video and I'm really proud of both videos. It's really worth it. Please give it a watch. I'd love to know any of your thoughts, feelings and opinions about any of the photos, any of the video on this trip. Would you have done anything differently to me? Is there anywhere that we missed that we should have explored that if we come back we should check out? I'd love to hear from you so please comment down below. As always folks, thanks a million for taking the time out of your day spending it here with me on YouTube. means
33:04 the world to me so thanks so much. Please feel free to like, subscribe and share the channel. Any and all support is greatly appreciated. Thanks again folks and I will see you in the next one. Have a lovely day.
