Cloud had been sitting on the whole valley since morning and then broke for about two minutes in the middle of the afternoon, dropping one shaft onto the slope opposite. Warm-graded because that is genuinely how it looked — the light coming through that gap was orange against snow that had been blue-grey all day. You do not plan for this; you just have to still be outside when it happens.

The Break
Verbier, Switzerland · January 2020
iPhone 11 Pro Max, 4 millimetres, f 1.8, 1/19000 of a second, ISO 40
Two minutes of sun through a day of cloud, and it landed in the right place.
Part of The Alps in Winter, a series.