James Ford, Te Waipounamu (PLACES 2021)

A panoramic view of New Zealand's South Island (Te Waipounamu) shot from Wellington. This was a technically challenging image to produce due to the distance of the subject and the amount of obscuring haze in between. For context, the nearest piece of shoreline is ~58km away from where I was and the tallest mountain in the image is ~120km away. At that distance over open ocean, there is more atmospheric distortion than there is between the ground and the moon. This image was achieved by stitching together 30 frames, each consisting of a 30 image stack. With post production in Lightroom and Photoshop. Shot on a Fujifilm X-T3 at 360mm, F/11, 1/250, ISO 80, with CPL and warming filters.

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