Michael Wilkins
Menu
Photograph of an empty road with a white centre line running straight toward a wall of snow-covered Southern Alps peaks in winter, snowy tussock flats on both sides and two distant campervans far ahead.

Straight at the Mountains

Aoraki / Mount Cook National Park, New Zealand · September 2020

1D X Mark II, 55 millimetres, f 11, 1/250 of a second, ISO 100

The centre line points where you should be looking anyway.

The last stretch of road into Mount Cook village, the morning after snow. I stood on the centre line — the two campervans ahead were most of the traffic — and let the road do the composing: one white dash after another, straight into a wall of fresh-loaded peaks. September in the park means the snow comes down to the valley floor and the whole massif turns architectural. Sometimes the obvious photograph is obvious because it works.

Part of The Southern Alps, a series.