Valerie Misa, The Calmness in the Drama (LANDSCAPE 2023)

On the way to Milford Sound, New Zealand, you’ll pass through a quaint little town where this jetty is located - Te Anau. In Maori, the name means “the Place of Swirling Waters”. On this day, it was more like “the Place of Swirling Clouds”. To complement my long exposure of the jetty and Lake Te Anau, I was hoping for some brilliant sunset colours over the Kepler and Murchison mountain ranges. Instead, it was a moody scene and with the light almost completely snuffed out by a thick mass of low-level clouds, I was close to packing up. But I’d spotted a small break in the clouds and waited patiently to capture the dramatic swirling clouds, iIluminated in soft pastels of orange, yellow, pink and magenta, passing over the mountain ranges and parting at the right time to reveal the peaks.

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