Mountain Fauna Lover

Mountain Fauna Lover is the project I run alongside my work in computer science: observing and filming alpine wildlife, and publishing what I find. It started as somewhere to put the footage I was already collecting, and it grew into a small brand with its own site and channels.

What it covers

The subject is the wildlife and landscape of the Italian Alps, and in practice that means a fairly narrow patch of them: Val di Rabbi, the Stelvio National Park, and the wider Trentino-Alto Adige region. Filming the same places repeatedly is not a limitation — it is the point. You learn where the animals actually are, and at what hour, in a way that one visit never teaches you.

Most of the work is digiscoping: shooting through a spotting scope rather than a long telephoto lens. It reaches much further than a camera lens at a fraction of the weight, which matters when the equipment has to be carried uphill before first light. It is also unforgiving — the depth of field is thin and the whole rig moves if you breathe wrong.

Where it lives

The project runs across four surfaces, each doing a different job:

• The website — bilingual English and Italian, covering the locations, the gear, and how digiscoping is done with respect for the animals.
• YouTube — the long-form work: wildlife films, digiscoping sessions, ski touring and exploration.
• Instagram — stills and behind the scenes.
• TikTok — short vertical cuts.

Watching without disturbing

The part that took longest to learn had nothing to do with cameras. Alpine wildlife is easy to displace, and an animal that runs is an animal spending energy it needed for the winter. Distance, patience and knowing when to leave matter more than any piece of equipment.

Video

Mountain Fauna Lover is one of my projects. I am Simone Mattioli, a computer science engineer and AI researcher; the rest of my work is on GitHub and in my publications.