Back in September I got a call from Rupert Gale at The Road Rat.. “how did I fancy shooting another series of mountain passes, but this time in Italy, in the Dolomites”
The mountain passes of the Dolomites are truly breathtaking, so as with the previous Road Rat assignment in the French Alps, I wanted to avoid using a single super wide cropped shot, so I opted to shoot panoramics using the ALPA 12 STC, ALPA HR Alpagon 4.0/40mm SB17 and a nodal rail. This gave a far more natural feel and perspective to the images and importantly avoided the ‘pull’ of a super wide lens, which is something I’m not keen on.
The scenes before us were so vast that some of them required up to 12 stitched frames, which were later put together using Photomerge in Photoshop. The largest PSB file ended up at just over 30 GB!
You can see a small selection of the work we made below, with more examples of the evolving ‘Great Mountain Passes’ project here.
“Exquisitely printed on a mix of heavy gloss and matt art papers, Issue Six of The Road Rat is a beautiful thing. 244 pages (it weighs around 1 kilo) The sixth Edition of The Road Rat is something of a diversion as it features a theme — Italy. We wanted to something to recognise the suffering, way back at the start of all this, of a nation that, as enthusiasts, is something of a Promised Land. So prepare to learn the psycho-geography of Turin, the dining habits of Enzo Ferrari, the sheer brilliance of small Italian cars and a look inside the astonishing mind and archive of Giovanni Michelotti.”
For The Road Rat magazine subscription information, head over here.
The opening spread.
Passo Rolle. Highest point: 1984m. Number of turns: 44.
Passo de Giau. Highest point: 2236m. Number of turns: 55.
Passo Gavia. Highest point: 2621m. Number of turns: 23.
Passo de Giau. Highest point: 2236m. Number of turns: 55.
