LAKE GARDA, ITALIAN PHOTO RETREAT

Join us on a winter Photo Retreat along the shores of Lake Garda, Italy’s largest lake, where we’ll craft minimalist images shaped by water, wind, and quiet light. In winter, Garda’s moods fades to pastel skies, misted mornings, empty promenades, and the silver plane of the lake against alpine silhouettes. We’ll explore serene towns, seeking elemental compositions in piers, breakwaters, chapel facades, winter vineyards, and boats at rest. Soft tones, long blue hours, and the poetry of emptiness invite calm, attentive seeing.

Our base is a magnificent Palladian palace residence, warm, luminous, and central to the experience. Here we’ll share meals wonderfully prepared by Anca, review and print our work, and balance exploration with creation.

Short, purposeful excursions into nearby Emilia-Romagna will extend our palette, with fog-bound rivers, Romanesque facades, quiet bridges, and muted industrial edges, chosen for mood and graphic clarity. We’ll embrace the quietest season: dawn for veiled horizons and gentle gradients; day for misty abstractions, crisp contrasts, rain-slick reflections, and wind-drawn lines; twilight and night for subdued color and elegant solitude

As with all our Photo Retreats, Rafael will work every day with each participant to edit, post-process, and print a curated portfolio of images made during the week. At the end of the week, Anca, who is also a professional bookmaker, will craft a handmade artist book for each participant, beautifully showcasing a curated selection of your printed photographs from this extraordinary photo retreat.