Heather Smith, Fury Unravelling (LANDSCAPE 2026)

It was a Monday afternoon and I'd stepped outside to decompress after work when the sky started doing something extraordinary. I grabbed the camera and walked out to the paddocks to get clear of the yard. The fury of this storm was unravelling across the sky. Two dark vortices stacked above each other, the curtain of rain tearing through the middle, the rainbow forcing its way into the frame, and beyond it all, that strip of blue sky, indifferent, inevitable, already moving in to reclaim the afternoon. I thought I was photographing a rainbow. I wasn't. I was watching a storm come apart in real time, every violent phase of it laid out in a single frame. We didn't get a drop. The people ten kilometres away got the full show. I just had the best seat in the house.

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.