Snowshoeing from a Different Perspective

Last weekend Kristen and I went back up to the Dolomites to do some more snowshoeing. This terrible weather that we've had in Italy all winter has dumped an enormous amount of snow up in the mountains! Conditions have been perfect for snow: not too cold and lots of moisture in the atmosphere. We've really been taking advantage of all the snow, and will probable keep heading north as long as the snow continues to pile up.

Since we've been blogging a lot about the Dolomites, I thought I'd do something a little different here. I'm posting a bunch of photos shot with my GoPro Hero...if you don't know these cameras check out this link for a glimpse into the cool images you can create with these tiny action cameras: http://gopro.com/

The GoPro gives you such a different perspective thanks to it's super wide angle lens. Also, there's no viewfinder or screen to see your shots...you just shoot away and hope for the best. I've been setting the camera up on a mount on my ski pole to get some interesting angles...ones that I'd never get with my DSLR. This first shot is a nice example of the unusual perspective...and a first glimpse into the amount of snow up in the Dolomites!

This second shot at left shows you the amount of snow even better. That's Kristen and her friend Sarah, another teacher at UWC, hiking into the wilderness in deep snow. Last weekend we stayed at Sarah's boyfriend's house and were able to do great hikes like this right from the house. Alessandro's family has a house up in the Dolomites in a small, quaint village tucked into a valley surrounded by these amazing peaks...that's it on the right.


Our hike took us into a shady, frozen river valley with snow 2-3 m deep at times. The valley was surrounded by giant Dolomite peaks glowing yellow and pink in the afternoon sun. I really like the super wide angle view of the mountains captured by the GoPro. Editing the photos is great because, like I said before, there's no viewfinder so you get what you get. The trick is holding the ski pole with the camera attached up over your head and adjusting the angle and pitch hoping to get a properly framed shot like this.


Here's another shot that shows how much snow there is this year! I love the way Kristen appears to be out on her own in the wilderness in this shot. See that peak glowing in the upper right hand corner of the photo? The next time we head back to this trail we're going to get much further into the mountains following this trail towards that peak.

This next one is fun...I'm holding the camera out on the ski pole while I cross one of many snowy bridges over the stream that flows through the valley from that mountain in the previous photo. A tough shot to get with an ordinary camera for sure. Easier with the GoPro, but tricky nonetheless because you have to watch your step without staring down at your feet.

Another shot of Kristen hiking into the wild. Here you can see that the trail heads straight towards that mountain that we hope to hike to another time. For this shot I had Kristen walk by the GoPro after I set my ski pole up in the snow next to the trail. I often make Kristen walk back and forth on trails while I shoot photos...just ask her about the Kalalau Trail in Kauai sometime.

Hope you enjoyed a few more pictures of us up in the Dolomites. More are sure to come as we continue to enjoy all this snow!

Portraits in the Fog

So I've already told you about the relentless fog here this winter. The weekend before last Kristen and I decided to make the best of it and go for a hike up in the Carso despite the continued dreariness. The fog that weekend was a little less thick, which made the light much better for some photography. I figured it would be a good time to practice my portrait photography because the thin fog creates a nice diffused light, the kind of light you want for portraits. So up in the Carso we went, with me carrying my photo gear and Kristen looking pretty!

Here are a couple of shots of Kristen from our foggy hike.

This first one shows the rocky trails up in the Carso very nicely. We hiked from our house in Duino up over the first ridge into Slovenia; the border is only about 2 km from home. The hike takes you along old WWI trails and trenches passing many reminders of the war...this area was a major battle ground during WWI. We hiked up to the top of Monte Ermada, which was a place synonymous with death during the war because so many Italian soldiers died trying to hold the front there. It's really strange to hike in a place like this...where a war was fought. You think about it all the time because you're always passing old barracks and gun posts, and everywhere the rocks on the trials show scars from intense shelling. If you're a history buff our area is a very interesting place to hike.

OK, enough about the war. Well, almost enough. The wall that Kristen is posing in front of in this second shot is an old homestead that we suspect was bombed in WWI. The stone wall, constructed in a typical fashion here in the Carso, made for a nice background for a portrait. I like this one a lot. Kristen always manages to match the environment when we go for hikes for some reason! See how well her outfit fits in with the pink in the walls? She did match pretty nicely in the previous shot too don't you think? (I'll take some credit for seeing the backgrounds to put her in front of, but somehow she always seems to wear the right clothes for the habitat on our hikes).

This last portrait was shot by Kristen...nice job! As you can see by our smiles in all the portraits, we kind of got over the foggy doldrums that have prevailed this winter. I think maybe knowing that we are moving home this summer has helped!

It's Official.

Yesterday, I handed the letter to my boss.  I have officially resigned from my position in Italy, effective at the end of August.

For various reasons, best shared over a beer or coffee rather than on a public blog or facebook page, we have decided that we will return to the US this summer.

I hope to find a teaching job somewhere.  I have applied for my teaching license in OR and could also easily return to NJ.  Hopefully there is a school or two out there looking for a highly qualified math teacher, and maybe even an IB coordinator.  If not in OR or NJ, at least in a state where most people speak English, where we can live in our own house, and where Tom can surf again.  Tom hopes to surf again.

Being in Italy has been a great experience so far.  I have learned more, different things than I ever imagined I would.  I will return to the US more sympathetic to outsiders in all contexts, more patriotic and ready to defend our political system despite it's problems, and more able to step away from work and enjoy the finer things in life:  people, places, and food!

The good news is we have six months left to enjoy our time here.  And you have six months left to visit. . .

Sunset in Duino!

Bird Rock

In between rain showers today I went for a hike in the Črnica (a Slovene word pronounced "Chur-neet-sa"). The Črnica is a wooded area between Duino and the next village to the west, Villaggio del Pescatore, which is where I go to surf when the Bora is blowing. I've walked the Črnica a bunch of times because Villaggio is also a very good birding spot. It's full of trails that wind and cross the woods in a maze...a good place to get lost. Today, I followed a tiny, overgrown trail that I hadn't seen before. It led me to this site.

I've been calling this rock "Bird Rock" for a while now because I've seen so many different birds perched on it. The best bird I've seen here was a Wryneck...a very difficult bird to see in Europe. Often, there's a Kingfisher perched on that branch on top of the rock staring down into the water looking for fish. Although I've looked at this rock with my binoculars from across a small cove so many times before, what made today different was that the hidden trail that I found took me directly to this rock! To my surprise there was a sunken boat next to the rock that couldn't be seen from my usual birding spot across the cove. Finding a trail to Bird Rock was a fun end to a rainy hike.  

RAIN!!

Kristen's getting a lot of use out of her cute rain boots! It's been raining and/or foggy almost nonstop since coming back to Italy after our trip home for the holidays. Seriously...some of the worst weather ever! I think the sun has come out on three days this year, and never for a full day. Last winter everyone here told us: "the weather is never this bad for this long." Well, I think maybe they forget how bad the weather gets in winter in northern Italy...unless this year is another unusual year.

My grand plan to do more photography in 2014 has been made very difficult with all the bad weather. I guess I could be practicing photographing in the rain, but it's so tough to get motivated in this weather. The coastal fog usually gives you good opportunities for interesting photos, I actually like photographing in fog, but not this kind of fog. There's been just no light piercing through the fog at all...it's just been this solid, grey, thick fog. Ugggh!

The rain has been so continuous that all the rivers are swollen to the top of their banks. One of my favorite locations for photographing birds, Riserva Naturale della Foce dell'Isonzo, has been under water. At the mouth of the Isonzo River, this sanctuary is subject to frequent flooding. With all this rain, we've heard that the flooding is really bad this time...a car apparently was washed away! So we haven't gone over there at all this year.

As I'm writing this blog post it's pouring outside. "Piove cani e gatti" (raining cats and dogs)! To pass some time today we're going to go to Koper, Slovenia to see an American movie (Slovenia plays movies in English...Italy does not...there's a silly Italian law that foreign movies must be dubbed in Italian). Maybe there will be some sun on the big screen.

Trying out our new snowshoes!

Our Christmas presents to each other this year were snowshoes. "Racchette da neve" in Italian (translated as "rackets for snow" which I guess is a fitting name for them). Last weekend we tried them out for the first time...where else: up in the Dolomites! We had to get out of Duino to find some sun because it's been so foggy and rainy here. In fact, we saw more sun during our trip to Oregon than we've seen in Duino this year. Fortunately, like in Oregon, to find the sun you just have to drive a little bit and get over a mountain. We found a bit of sun up in the area around Cortina, and lots of snow! All that rain at the coast has apparently been falling as snow up in the Alps. So you'll be seeing more mountain pics in future blog posts because we're planning to take advantage of all this snow.

I Dolomiti

OK...I missed a day already and it's only Jan 3! But to be fair, we were traveling the past 24 hours...so I didn't break my New Year's resolution already! Here's a quick link to some photos taken on my recent trip up to the Dolomites. I spent a weekend up there while Kristen was off in Rome with some students. Click the link below and enjoy!

Dolomite Photos

Buon Anno!

I decided on my 2014 New Year's resolution: BLOG MORE OFTEN!

Really, my resolution is to do something every day to improve my photography. But blogging more often should help me keep my resolution. Photography has been a passion of mine since my dad gave me his old silver Pentax SLR when I was a kid. Something you may not know about me...back in high school I had planned to go to college for photography and have always thought about making a living as a photographer. To be honest, I ended up getting my PhD in ecology mostly because I have always liked photographing wild things. My love of nature photography just led me down that path. I often joke that when I retire from my second career as an ecologist I'll become a photographer. So this year, now that I'm no longer working at Rutgers, I decided I would get back to the thing that I have always been so passionate about...photography.

When I was trying to come up with my resolution I thought about things like "make a photograph a day" or "set up a photo website", things like that. Then it hit me...just blog a photo a day. One photograph, a new one made every day. I'm going to try to stick to this, but I may end up cheating a bit at first by posting an old photo now and then (only photos from Italy though). Hopefully you'll enjoy checking our blog for the new photos! The new photos will start once we get back to Italy in a few days.

Here's the first photo for 2014. I shot this at a roadside stream up in the Dolomites a few weeks ago. More photos of the Dolomites to come very soon!