Michael Wilkins
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Aerial photograph of Lake Pukaki at dawn, a wide expanse of still teal water filling most of the frame, snow-covered Southern Alps reduced to a thin sunlit band on the horizon under a pastel sky.

Pukaki, Before the Wind

Lake Pukaki, New Zealand · September 2020

DJI Mavic Air 2, 5 millimetres, f 2.8, 1/15 of a second, ISO 200

Mostly water on purpose. The mountains can have the top eighth.

Same September morning as the first-light frame, but pointed down instead of out. Most of this picture is water — the glacial flour that makes Pukaki that impossible teal reads almost black before the sun reaches it, and the range gets squeezed into a thin lit band along the top. I flew the drone lower and kept cutting sky until the lake stopped being a foreground and became the subject. Winter, no wind, nine minutes of battery to get it done.