After two years of the pandemic and a break from solo photography travel, I felt the need to take an important step in my career. I had started collaborating with an Italian tour operator as a tour leader, accompanying groups of travelers on excursions. During these group trips, I had little opportunity to engage in photography unless there was a safari or wildlife spotting activity involved.
At the end of the summer, I felt an emptiness in my chest, as if there was something inside me that wanted to express itself. I felt the need to take my passion for photography seriously. It was time to make a big investment in photography equipment. However, getting financing from the bank was impossible for me, as I did not have stable employment contracts, especially after the last few years of the pandemic. I didn’t even want to ask my parents to help me, I wanted to manage on my own. But there was no other choice. I had to ask my father to get a loan for himself and then transfer it to my checking account.
Having obtained the payment, I entered the photographic equipment shop in Siena and finally made the big purchase, switching from Nikon to Canon. At that point I was overwhelmed by a whirlwind of emotions, so much so that I started to cry. Gabriele, the owner of the shop, gave me a bottle of wine and, thanking him, I asked him for good wishes for my new photographic career. It was October 7, 2021. The next day I got a ticket for Romania, a one-way trip.
ROMANIA – OCTOBER 2021
THE ARRIVAL
I leave the house with the best wishes of the family and the grandmother’s ritual of spreading coarse salt in my pockets for good luck. I take the Chieti – Rome bus and am picked up by the rental company. I book a property in Brasov, Transylvania, for 20 days. I want to photograph brown bears in an authentic and wild way. I arrive at the structure managed by a couple, the husband is a hiking guide. They immediately recommend places for spotting wild animals. After a hot shower, she goes to bed.
RECI FOREST AND FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH THE BROWN BEAR
I had an appointment in the afternoon with a nature guide to spot bears near the Piatra Craiului national park.
Before the appointment, I decide to explore the Reci Forest, a place not too far away where wildlife is usually spotted, but I can’t see any except a roe deer. However, my attention then falls on something fascinating: a poisonous mushroom that distantly reminded me of the very famous “Amanita Muscaria“, the red one with all the white dots.
During lunch, I meet the guide, who tells me that bears are often fed by humans to keep them away from population centers. Along the journey to the park, while I imagine photographing a bear in an autumn forest, we suddenly spot a male bear and immediately stop to observe him. Although the light conditions were not ideal, I managed to take some photos, even beautiful ones, and I stayed there shooting until dark.
Back at the hotel, I show the photos to the staff, who are impressed. I rush into my room, excited as a child, and download all the day’s material to share with friends and family.
RETURN TO RECI FOREST
I decide to return to Reci Forest. I take the car and head down the road. Huge stork nests can be seen everywhere, on electricity poles and on the roofs of houses.
While I walk and look with binoculars, I am on a video call with a friend who also deals with wildlife photography and I tell him about my first encounter with the bear. We chat quite a bit and as I walk back to the car I manage to see the silhouette of a bird of prey on a meadow. I can’t understand what it is exactly, but it is certainly a European long-eared owl, given its size and way of flying.
I do another round but I find nothing, absolute zero. Where I had met the owl a few hours earlier, I see something moving again and I get closer. It was a fox. He notices me, stares at me for a moment and then runs away into the woods, but not completely, until he disappears into thin air. He turns and stares at me, and guess what? He poops while he looks at me, then walks away… “Thank you Volpe”, I joke. It’s getting dark and with the sun the temperature also drops, so I return to the accommodation.
BEAR PHOTOGRAPHY SHED
The shed photography session is essentially a photographic house and there are different types: this one here in Romania is a real wooden house in front of a valley with a glass window from which you can observe the outside. It can hold several dozen people and was designed to bring tourists to observe wildlife up close.
Just during a hut photo session, I was lucky enough to take photos of a large male bear with a dark coat, missing an ear. The guide told me that the bear had won a territorial battle despite its war wound.
On the return trip, I talked to the guide about my intention to visit Macin National Park and he gave me the contact of a friend who owned a campground near the park entrance, called Turtle Camp.
By chance, he had a friend who owned a campsite just a couple of km from the park entrance and who also had some bungalow houses.
After packing up, I had a chat with Adrian, explaining the reason for my trip. He told me that the entrance to Macin National Park was nearby. I was in Romania, I had time and a car, so why not take advantage of it?
MACIN PARK
The following days at Macin Park all unfolded in the same way. Adrian had informed me of the office at the entrance to the park, where you had to declare your presence. Photographers were charged a staggering €40 a day for entry, so he advised me to hide my camera in my backpack and only use it when necessary. I never wanted to pay that amount just because I was a photographer, considering that entry was free.
However, I decided to go to the park headquarters, which was a large building with a museum of stuffed animals and an office on the upper floor. While I was in the museum, a girl appears and becomes my guide. She initially speaks in English, but when I tell her that I am Italian, she continues in Italian. She shows me a blow-up of the park with places where I can see birds of prey, in particular griffon vultures, which I had never seen before, even though they are common in Abruzzo.
The park was a vast clearing with plateaus easily climbable in about ten minutes of walking. There were three ditches called “Mary’s stones” one kilometer from the entrance, easily reachable by car to the base. I reach them immediately and position myself on the top of the first “stone” from which you can see the whole prairie. There is a shepherd with a large flock and only one dog. We greet each other as a sign of respect, like mountaineers or hikers do when they pass each other on the paths.
RETURN TO TRANSYLVANIA, TOWARDS BUSTENI AND SINAIA
I choose the Bucegi Mountains national park as the next destination on his journey. The towns of Sinaia and Busteni, close to the park, are very popular with tourists who are keen on trekking. I book a cheap accommodation called Casa David in Busteni. Before showing me my room, the lady at the property wrote me on a piece of paper all the various attractions in the area, including trekking, waterfalls and points of interest.
MONTI BUCEGI NATIONAL PARK
Among the various activities proposed by the lady of the structure, I was particularly intrigued by “the European Sphinx”. So, I decided to look for information on the internet and I discovered that it is a miniature of the Sphinx located in the Carpathian mountains in Romania.
After a hearty breakfast and preparing my photography equipment, I set off. As I climbed towards the top of the mountain, I noticed that the woods changed color and we went from dense vegetation to open spaces in just a few meters of road. The place was incredibly beautiful and little known. Although I follow many travelers on social media, I think I was the first to visit this place.
I stopped practically every 100 meters to take photos, feeling like a child. I didn’t have to wait long for my first lucky encounter: there was a fox at the edge of the road who didn’t seem to be bothered by my presence or people in general. She was used to finding food easily in that area. Even though I wasn’t taking a completely wild photograph, I decided to capture the fox with a beautiful close-up and a winking look, which is one of my favorite types of photos.
Arriving at the large car park in Piatra Arsa, I asked the girl who served me for general information. From her, I was able to get information about the trails. The girl told me that following the yellow posts it would take me about an hour and a half to reach the Sphinx.
The walk was gorgeous, the landscapes were breathtaking and the Sphinx had its charm. I decided to return to the car following a detour that I had noticed on the way back, where there were signs indicating the presence of Alpine chamois, wolves and bears.
I returned to the shelter and met the owner, Gabriel, who was the boyfriend of the girl I had met in the morning. He was very nice and had a very Italian way of doing things that made me smile. In addition to being the owner of the refuge, he was also a hiking guide and during the summer he took people on excursions. I asked him if he knew of any area where I could spot bears and he proudly told me that he lived right there.
I was driving towards the indicated place and when there were a few hundred meters to go, a car coming down from the opposite side signaled to me with its high beams. I was in disbelief but thrilled. I slowed down, rounded the bend and in front of me I found a family of brown bears: a mother with two cubs. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It seemed that someone from above had listened to my desire to have such a meeting at a time when the light for photography was perfect and above all there was no one around. It was a situation all for me.
I took about 250 photographs from inside the car. I captured the mother and cubs playing, one puppy standing and all three together. But above all, I realized that I had taken those 5-6 photographs that would become my icons, images that anyone would associate with me because they reflected my style and represented me.
I couldn’t believe it. It had all happened effortlessly, without the need to lure them with bait. That evening, I skipped dinner at the facility to focus on developing and retouching images. In the meantime, I started publishing some of them. That was one of the most productive days of my life as a photographer, and the investment in equipment that had made my heart cry that day in Siena finally made sense.
The following days all unfolded in the same way. Breakfast, journey to Piatra Arsa where Gabriel’s kiosk was, lunch prepared by him, sun, coffee and then off to the bears which I would meet another 4 times in 6 days. This was my wonderful stay in the Bucegi Mountains National Park in Transylvania, a place that I will always remember with immense joy.
CHEILE TURZII AND RESTART
Having left Transylvania, I head north. On October 30th I would have received a group that I would have to pick up at Cluj airport (at that time I was collaborating with an Italian tour operator as tour leader of group trips) and I had a few days free before my personal trip ended.
I spent two days in a town not far from a characteristic place, the Turda Gorges.
A rich valley with very suggestive hiking trails and above all rich in birdlife. In those two days I dedicated myself to the buzzards trying to photograph one in flight and I succeeded very well.
Once the group arrived we retraced the journey I had just taken in reverse towards Bucharest from which we would all then leave. They to return to Italy and I to continue my journey.
In the previous days I had booked a flight to Vienna where in addition to visiting the city (I had lived in Austria for a total of two years but I had only been to Vienna once for a train change), I would see some friends again and Michele would join me there from ‘Italy, who would have been my traveling companion in Poland.
POLAND – NOVEMBER 2021
DEPARTURE
The first day of the trip was a day of transfer, collection of the vehicle and accommodation in the structure.
The route was Vienna – Krakow and would have lasted approximately 6 hours. Train journeys have always had their charm for me: you are still while everything around you is moving and it often happens that my mind starts to fantasize contemplating the empty imagining the coming wonders.
We had chosen Krakow as our first stop because we had the desire to visit the Nazi concentration camps Auschwitz – Birkenau.
THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS
From Krakow it was only an hour and twenty minute journey to Auschwitz and although I have never been a great student of history, in recent years I have become increasingly closer to one of the most shocking events in our history.
The concentration camps are certainly the brutal icon of the second great war, a scar that continues to mark the consciences of the whole world.
I won’t stop to describe here in this diary everything I felt in that couple of hours of visit but I will limit myself to showing you some images I took in the Auschwitz and Birkenau camps.
Extremely distressed we return to the hotel and spend the evening in the center of Krakow.
SLOWINSKI NATIONAL PARK
Still a little shaken from the previous day, we head towards the north of the country.
We had spent the previous weeks documenting ourselves here and there to look for something interesting before reaching the infamous Bialowieza Forest, on the border with Belarus.
We had found in some books and in some articles on the Internet a very characteristic place, an almost desert landscape but which was located on the Baltic: the Slowinski National Park. An enormous sand dune formed by the force of the wind from the Baltic Sea.
From the first images I had seen on the Internet it seemed to me that I was looking at one of the deserts of Namibia with those dry trees in the middle of the sand. That transfer day was the only sunny day we would encounter on our entire trip to Poland.
In addition to the Slowinski desert we had found a couple of other places to go for a ride. Yes, the Slowinski park was very special and certainly worth a visit.
There was a piece that made me think of Egypt, with these sand dunes and a sharp rock in the background that made me think of a pyramid.
Returning to the hotel, we encounter a poisonous mushroom well known due to its bright colors: the amanita muscaria, the famous red mushroom with white dots. I was satisfied.
BIEBRSKA NATIONAL PARK
In Poland, during this period, it gets dark at 3.30pm. At 4pm, you can no longer see anything 10 meters away. Biebrska National Park and Bialowieza Forest are the easternmost places in the country.
Biebrska Park is famous for its high concentration of moose throughout Europe. It is a vast plain made up of dense forests, rivers, lakes, marshes and endless expanses of low vegetation with water levels of 15-20 cm.
The alarm clock rang every morning at 5am to start our car tour around 5.30am, driving along the immense roads of the park trying to spot something with binoculars from the different points that the guide had shown me in the previous days.
One morning we decide to come across a walkway and looking through binoculars we manage to see the silhouette of a moose. It was a mother with her little one.
He notices us, he looks at us so we duck. She remains there, but with a careful look. We were very close, we had to try everything…
In the end, mission failed: we were discovered. She and the child flee into the woods.
On the last day, however, completely unexpectedly, there was a baby moose a few tens of meters from the main road which instead allowed itself to be photographed calmly. Too bad about the light, too dark.
TOWARDS BIALOWIEZA, FINALLY…
Poland is famous in naturalistic terms for one reason among many: it is the only nation where the largest number of European bison is present. There are approximately a thousand of them and all concentrated in the Bialowieza forest, on the border with Belarus.
At the end of 2021 there were serious problems of illegal immigration on the borders between Poland and Belarus (I can’t tell you exactly what it was but the streets were packed with soldiers, police, forest rangers)
We arrive in Bialowieza in the late afternoon and had booked a structure in a completely new building complex. We had shopped for dinner, breakfast and a packed lunch for the following day where the first photographic session would await us in a hut equipped for photographers in an area frequented by many animals present in the forest.
THROUGH THE FOREST (BIALOWIEZA)
We had about 45 minutes to travel to get to the cabin and in any case we had to be there at least an hour before sunrise
The building was very beautiful, used specifically for 4 people. A real photographic house with a comfortable position, a gas cylinder that heated the room, a hole on the front to position the camera lens and various supports to make everything more comfortable (we had to stay in there for 8- 9 hours).
The first subjects to visit were various birds, passerine birds and woodpeckers but the real surprise was after less than half an hour when a beautiful, fast and very shy bird of prey arrived: the Goshawk.
Since I am a lover of photos, I managed to photograph it in flight and it was not easy. A little later another bird of prey came to visit us, smaller and also not exactly easy to meet: the Eurasian sparrowhawk.
BISONS BISONS BISONS
Every time I know that I am about to face some decisive day for my artistic career as a traveling photographer I always think back to when I started, or at least to the period in which I had given birth within me to the idea of wanting to pursue my passion at all costs. whatever it takes even if you don’t know where to start. To those periods of great uncertainty, to those depressing days when I told myself that I would never be able to afford to have high-quality photographic equipment. After a few years I can easily see that where there is a will, there is a way.
Let’s get back to the trip.
The bison guide picked us up at 6 in the morning and we arranged ourselves in two different cars: him in front and us in the back and we communicated with a walkie talkie.
The plan was as follows: we would follow the guide who would make a sign with the lights to indicate the places where we would stop to make which foray on foot into the forest and in case we would see the large mammals, we would stop to observe and photograph them.
The first meeting didn’t take long to arrive. I remember that day with some amazement because the guide explained to us how after the Second World War there were only 9 specimens left European bison and mostly kept in captivity but which, after a long program to safeguard the species, have managed to reach such a number that they can be released back into nature. Today Bialowieza has approximately a thousand specimens.
The first group we met was made up of around twenty specimens who initially looked at us curiously, arousing some suspicion, but who after about ten minutes were much calmer and didn’t even look at us anymore, allowing themselves to be photographed without too much hesitation.
That day I had taken many photographs but there was one that particularly struck me, even if it wasn’t particularly my genre. It was a pack photo, where all the specimens were looking at my lens and in the background the opaque white of the fog with the trees disappearing into a silky blanket
After a couple of hours, we resume our activities by moving near one of the villages adjacent to the forest which was also teeming with army soldiers.
THE SEA EAGLES
Birds of prey have always aroused a profound fascination in me; perhaps I see a lot of myself in them: cunning, being shy, looking around, distrust.
I was in the car heading to the place where the next day I would carry out my photographic session from a new shed in a flat and large area of land where a guy had set up his photographic houses.
I was paired with another Danish photographer and we had a large shed just for us where we entered from 5 in the morning until 3 in the afternoon: 10 hours of eagle photo session.
Photographically it was a beautiful day with a dozen eagles who had approached and more than willingly fought with each other for a few seconds to win the meal of the day.
The most beautiful photo of all, however, was the one taken in bursts of an eagle that was flying straight towards my lens at its maximum wingspan. That was absolutely the best photo of my day.
There was also a half hour in which it started to snow and in that moment I managed to capture a beautiful image: an eagle with its neck turned 180 degrees looking at my lens while it snowed.
The session was now over and the first part of the trip to Poland was coming to an end. After a few days I would receive a new group from the same tour operator I was collaborating with in that period but this time the group was only photographic.
We would repeat the activities in Bialowieza with the bison and the huts and then I would return here again to the eagles with the new guys.
OUTRO – POST TRIP
I still didn’t know what I would do in December. Usually, I start working in Austria for the winter season until April. I was waiting until the last minute to find out if Austria would ease the pandemic restrictions and if my owner would be able to open the place. But that winter, everything fell apart. So I decided to return to Chieti and stay at home for a while.
During the flight from Warsaw to Rome, my creative inspiration began to whisper in my mind: “Why not organize a photography exhibition for the entire Christmas period, exhibiting all the new works from this year? You’ve made a great start again after the pandemic, you have new gear, you’ve done 7 group trips, you’ve visited 4 new countries…plan it!”.
As soon as I landed, I sent a message to Andrea, who has an auto repair shop across from my house. Next to the workshop there was a room that had been empty for several years. In the past, Andrea had told me that if I wanted to organize an event there, he would have allowed it without problems.
I arrived on December 3rd and the next morning I went to talk to him. On the morning of the 5th we were there painting the walls and doing the work. On the 7th I received all the prints and paintings with the new works for 2021. On the 8th December I inaugurated my new photographic exhibition “Wild Christmas”.
It was a beautiful month, full of emotions and many surprises. I even received a visit from the mayor of Chieti, to whom I obviously gave a gift. Every weekend I hosted a guy I had worked with in the past, who raises birds of prey. Together we always organize wonderful days for educational purposes and people literally go crazy about it.
The idea of holding the photographic exhibition in an empty shop was a winning one. No one in my city had done something like this yet, especially with a photographic exhibition of animals in nature from different parts of the world.
