Bloom beneath the Summit

At dawn, lupins glowed violet beneath the first light on Mount Cook. Expressed through my Vertique vision, the composition lifts the eye from earth to peak, like a modern kakejiku hanging scroll.

Some landscapes feel quietly arranged by nature, rewarding those who return and wait. In the valley below Mount Cook, fresh lupins gathered colour as first light moved across the Southern Alps. The day before, Jarrod Castaing and I had walked the valley for hours, exploring fields and river edges, imagining how the light might fall. We returned before sunrise, hopeful but unhurried.

As light touched the summit, the sky softened into rose tones echoing the blossoms below. For a brief time, flower, mountain, and sky felt in balance, each answering the other.

What struck me most was the balance of scale. Small and fleeting, the lupins held their presence before the vast permanence of the mountain. The delicate and the monumental stood together, neither diminished by the other.

I framed this moment through Vertique, a vertical perspective that rises from ground to summit. In this form, the landscape becomes a living scroll, unfolding upwards through layers of colour, form, and time. More than a photograph, it is a meditation on harmony, patience, and the fleeting precision of nature's timing.