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As the holiday season heats up, take a moment to imagine being somewhere else. Think of a place where sapphire shadows cover an ancient temple or lavender mists embrace a hilltop. If this sounds good, forget the airfare and just head over to the Waverly Street Gallery in Bethesda where an evocative and frankly beautiful selection of Richard Lasner's new photographic watercolor prints is on view.

In an exhibition titled "Elsewhere," Lasner, the author of extensive portfolios of photos of Italy, explores other regions of the world including countries in Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, plus New Zealand, the Berkshire Mountains in Massachusetts and a few hidden spots in Italy.

Bethesda-based, Lasner is an internationally known photographer who won the fourth-place photography award at the 700-artist International Contemporary Art Biennale in Florence last December. Following him over the past six years or so, we have seen each new portfolio of lushly toned photographs capturing the visual essence of faraway places, and, with the keenest sense of composition and color, making them seem present and accessible.

Lasner delights in recalling the experiences that lead to his photos, and can be interviewed at the gallery pretty much every day of the exhibit, up through Dec. 4. He was prompted to visit the western Balkans — all parts of the former Yugoslavia — after taking a course at Georgetown University on the history of the region that attempted to make sense of what caused all the violence there in the 1990s. In Sarajevo (Bosnia), there were all too many visible reminders of days of horror. One photo shows the wall of a house riddled with bullet holes, recalling the Serbian siege of the city. Yet, the photo, taken earlier this year, is filled with sunlight.

Views taken in Croatia reflect the beauty of this republic on the northern Adriatic coast, an area that once belonged to Venetian state and bears a great resemblance to Italy. Motovun, on the Istrian peninsula, is a case in point. "Farm House Emerging: Motovun, Croatia" was taken at dawn while a thick lavender fog filling the valley slowly began to dissipate. Lasner is a master at images like this. One can almost touch the softness of the atmosphere, partly because of the technique he uses to print these digital files. The photos are high-resolution prints made with water-based archival inks. Printed on finely textured watercolor paper through a refined ink-jet process, the images have a color range and density unlike any other kind of photographic print. Lasner works with a master printer on a machine with a capacity of up to 16.7 million colors to produce each individual large-sized image that can replicate the actual colors of the scene; they are not manipulated. The photos are all large format, about 20 by 30 inches, a satisfying scale for these sweeping landscape compositions.

"Celestial View," another view of Motovun, required an early morning hike above the tree-line. It is literally breathtaking, with a thick bank of clouds descending on the valley in a diagonal wedge, leaving a row of dark green trees in the foreground silhouetted against the white of the clouds. Similarly remarkable are the images of the Adriatic coastal towns of Montenegro, in particular a photo of orange flowers bursting out from a stone container at the medieval monastery of Kotor near the town of Perast.

Lasner is not the sort of photographer who looks for what French photojournalist Henri Cartier-Bresson called the "decisive moment." His approach is more methodical, studying each location, asking questions about the light at different times of day, and then carefully composing his images. On his trip to Cambodia, he was told that the sky above the famed Temple of Angkor Wat showed pink and purple tones in the morning. He didn't see that, but instead was able to capture a blue-toned scene of the ancient ruin just before sundown. In a niche along the side of the temple wall, Lasner discovered the relief of a goddess. The worn surface of the painted stone comes to life through green plants sprouting from it, adorning the figure's shoulders, and coming out from between her hands. Perfectly framed and color balanced, the picture goes way beyond a simple document of place.

Among the Italian views, one could almost smell the salt air mixed with the scent of flowers on a terrace in Taormina (Sicily) or be struck by the spare beauty of an "orica," a large ceramic pot, set in the niche of a house on the Aeolian island of Salina. I especially liked a photo of an arched side door at the Pitti in Florence, with a niche containing a statue right next to it, echoing its form. The statue's niche is just a shade darker than the pinkish tone of the arch around the door.

"Fishing Boats: Nha Trang, Vietnam" is a composition of curved dark forms moving up the picture plane against the simple grey of the water. At the center, one boat features a bright red printed cloth, which becomes the focal point. The key to Lasner's talent is finding an image this powerful in something that is totally ordinary and render it extraordinary. Lasner's ability to recognize a scene that can be transformed by photographic framing is also at the heart of what he does: making images that can keep giving, that become a place for meditation on the beauty of this world, or at least a very small part of it.