Between Frames - June 2025
Italy, Chattanooga, and more!
Introduction:
Hope you enjoyed last month’s newsletter. If you haven’t read it yet, you can find it here. It’s jammed packed.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to write two newsletters this month, so I’m going to try to push things one more month. July wasn’t that eventful, so it’ll be an easier one to write.
Now to June—Paloma and I started the month on vacation with her family in Italy. We were only there for a week; far too short to enjoy all that the region has to offer, but long enough to slow down and rest some.
Just like last month, this newsletter is going to have a lot of images, so I’d recommend reading it on the Substack app.
Italy:
Paloma, her family, and I went to Italy for their annual family vacation. Each year, we choose a new destination to visit—this year it was the Lake Garda region of Italy. Lake Garda is near the Dolomites, in Northeast Italy—the lake was likely carved by the same glaciers as the rest of the Dolomite range.1
We stayed in a quaint little village on the lake shore and spent most of our days driving up and down the coast to visit the towns that dotted the lake’s rim. Many of these towns were full of tourists, but not the traditional “American tourists on their European vacation” that you might expect. Most tourists were German, coming down to Lake Garda. To be honest, it was refreshing to be away from Americans for a while.
Enough possibly-controversial opinions. Onto some images!
Swimming on Lake Garda felt like we were swimming in a crater carved by an asteroid at the top of a mountain—it just had that other-worldly feeling. I miss it.
Most evenings, we’d venture out to a lakeside village for dinner. Each of these villages were beautiful in their own way, always giving us a view of the sunset across the lake. Torri del Benaco was a town that we visited more than once. I spent lots of time in the harbor, photographing people as they lived their quiet lives in rural Italy.
Where we were in Italy was only a 2hr drive from Venice. If we were this close to such a famous city, we might as well go!
TL;DR — Venice is a day trip.
For us, we didn’t feel like the Venice area offered enough for it to be more than a day trip. It’s just various piazzas, canals, and bridges—again and again. It’s all beautiful, but not anything that different from one to another. I fully recommend that everyone go. Just also visit the countryside while you’re there.
After Venice, I spent the next few days hiking in the mountains. Lake Garda is in the basin formed by some “Dolomite-adjacent” mountains. One of those is Monte Baldo, a tall peak that I visited twice on our trip.
Both days, I reached the peak of the mountain and could see the lake (1700 meters in elevation below me) clearly. However, shortly after arriving to the top both days, the clouds took over the peak and visibility was reduced to only a few feet. Here are some images before and after the white out.
That’s the majority of images from the trip. There are a handful of images that I love, but that don’t fit into one of the “buckets” that I featured above. Here they are!
A Quick Note on My Style…
I’ve found that my traditional, true-to-life photography style has been getting a little boring to me as of late. I’ve been inspired by people like Harry Talbot, Ashley Gruber, and Andrew Granstaff2
The way that these photographers will intentionally “break the rules”—crushed blacks, out of focus elements, blown highlights, and askew compositions—allows their images to stand out from those around them.
I’m kinda tired of my style being so simple. I’ll admit that there’s plenty of beauty in making images this way, but I think that I am ready to make images a bit more creatively. Throughout this newsletter, you’ll see a few images that are different than my normal style.
There’s a time for both styles—old and new—and I think that I’m going to let the creative side come out a bit more now.
Chattanooga:
I’ll keep this section short. At the end of June, Paloma and I went down to Chattanooga, TN for a weekend to celebrate our friend’s, Alyssa, birthday! We rented a large cabin with a group of friends and just had a chill weekend full of great meals, good conversation, and a lot of coffee.3
Conclusion:
June took so much out of me. It was non-stop travel, and that wore us out. July was very chill in comparison—a much needed refresh. I’m working on that newsletter now, so I promise that you’ll be able to see some of those photos here soon.
Okay, this newsletter is too long. See ya next time.
Peace & blessings!
-C
I’m choosing to just assume this rather than research it. It makes loads of sense, especially given the direction that the lake faces.
You’ll easily see that two of these images are from the Tour de France. I’m deep into cycling now. Congrats, Tadej. You deserved that one!
And maybe a few beers haha
love it!