Michael Wilkins
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Photograph of a wide untouched snow bowl in soft flat light, a handful of curving ski tracks running down the smooth white slope with two tiny distant figures for scale.

First Lines

New Zealand · July 2017

1D X Mark II, 105 millimetres, f 13, 1/1000 of a second, ISO 400

Four sets of tracks on the whole face. We were early.

An entire face with four sets of tracks on it, shot flat-on with a long lens so the slope fills the frame and the horizon disappears completely. Without the two specks near the top there is no scale at all and it stops being a mountain — which is most of why I like it. Flat overcast keeps the snow almost featureless, so the tracks are the only line in the picture.

Part of The Southern Alps, a series.