Stephen Milner, The Seasonal Beauty of New Zealand’s National Park (Landscape (2019))

Tongariro is New Zealand's oldest national park and a dual World Heritage area. This status recognises the park's important Maori cultural and spiritual associations as well as its outstanding volcanic features. The park has three active volcanoes, which are Tongariro, Ngauruhoe (Mount Doom in “The Lord of the Rings" films) and Ruapehu. The landscape of this area is unique and changes dramatically between summer and winter. In the summer months it is very coarse and brown in colour. Contrastingly, in winter it is mostly smooth and white with snow. Typically, most people see this landscape in the summer when it is easily accessible. Over the winter I regularly visited the national park and camped in the snow on the summit (1,500m to 2,500m) of these volcanoes to capture them in the best light possible. This was challenging because of the equipment that I needed to carry so that I could survive in this environment. Plus, the camera equipment that made it a heavy load to carry. In summer it was lot easier but camping was still required. These images were taken using a Fujifilm XT-1 with the 16-55mm lens. I also used Formatt Hitech graduated filters to control contrasting light. Because of the cold temperatures, using the filters was a challenge as they kept fogging over.

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