yanzhang

Mount Fox is a mountain that I wanted to climb in July 2016, but not proceed due to a bad weather condition. So this place has set to be one of my priority goals during my December 2016 New Zealand mountain trip. After stayed several days in Mount Cook area, I drove to west coast for climbing Mount Fox, although there was only about one day weather window for this action. With a height of 1645 m, Mount Fox is not a technical mountain from a climb perspective. But its steepness and easy to get lost in a foggy situation makes this journey still challenging, especially when one wants to carry all camping and photography gears to the mountain. There was a ideal spot for camping in this mountain, somewhere around 1240 m high near the summit - not exposed and easy to access water from tarns. I started my climb before 10:00am on 8 December 2016. Since the day before had had heavy rain falls, the track was full of mad, wet and slippery. With a full back of camping and photography gears on, it took me 5 hours to reach the destination. I found this composition showing the two major tributaries from the mountain flowing into the sea. The sunset light beautifully irradiated the mountain ridge and plain below, given a great sense of depth of this scenery. Thanks for viewing this image.

There had been heavily raining and a thunderstorm during 11-12 November 2016 night. But the rain stopped around 9am on 12 November morning. I predicted that those waterfalls in Blue Mountains would be interesting after an overnight heavy rain, so decided to go for a shoot. I was right, Edit Fall was about twice larger than its usual size. I waited here long enough until the midday sunlight started to shine on the waterfall. Thanks for viewing this image.

It was around 5:20am on 30 April 2016 local time. During this a pre-twilight period, some thin clouds around the peaks already started to change colors, while the moon still hang high in the sky and shined the Fitz Roy peaks brightly. This moonlight with pre-twilight glow light enabled me to take this image without loosing any details. Thanks for viewing this image.

Laguna Sucia is one of the three lakes under Fitz Roy peaks. Getting to this spot is not trivial. I hiked to this place and stayed for one night. The outcome was simply a reward. Thanks for viewing this image.

On 5 May 2016, I departed from El Chalten at 5:00am, I hiked in the darkness with a full load of climb backpack (25 kg) - my journey of climbing to Glacier Torre began. I arrived at Laguna Torre at 7:40am and waited for my climb companion Andy. This image was taken during my waiting for Andy's arrival. Surprisingly, when I got there, I found Laguna Torre was completely frozen - that was very different from what I saw 2 weeks ago. I could see so many icy blocks everywhere along the edge of the lake. This image captured an amazing scene during the sunrise moment. Thanks for viewing this image,

Sylvia Falls in Blue Mountains of NSW, Australia has been a subject I photographed many times over the years. I took this image on 17 September 2016, when the sunlight was shining from the top of the waterfalls, and particularly made the waterfalls in a great lighting condition. Thanks for view this image.

In my recent New Zealand mountain expedition, my original plan was to climb to two or three high places in Mount Aspiring. But continuous heavy rains affected my plan, and I had to stay in Wanaka for two days waiting for a feasible weather window. This image was taken when I was waiting in Wanaka. This image was taken when I was waiting in Wanaka. The late afternoon light was just amazing when the rain stopped. Roy's Peak is a mountain in the South Island of New Zealand, standing between Wanaka and Glendhu Bay with the height of 1,578 m. From its summit, it offers a grand view across Lake Wanaka and up to the peak of Mount Aspiring. Thanks for viewing this image.

Taken from the edge of Laguna del Los Torres in a calm and stunning sunrise morning. Thanks for viewing this image.

Thanks for looking at this image. Here is what I did: 4 shots for the sky, each at ISO3200，30 seconds. These shots sufficient to cover the entire sky what I wanted to include in the final image. Then 4 shots for the mountain and foreground, ISO 1600, 5 minutes each, with noise reduction on, so each took 10 minutes to complete. I took the 4 sky shots first, that took 2 minutes in total. Then the 4 mountain foreground shots took 40 minutes to complete. There were no issue for stitching the 4 sky shots together.

New Zealand's Southern Alps probably is one of the greatest places in the world to view the night sky, especially in early July each year, because during this period, every night, from 12:00am, the Milky Way centre would move down towards the west, which makes the stunning Milky Way become paralleling with the west faced mountain ridges. After doing precise study, I decided to take this advantage and climb to some high place in Mount Aspiring. Climbing to Liverpool Hut needs some effort - one has to first hike 8 km starting Aspiring Hut along West Matukituki Valley Track, then climb 1.2 km with 530 meters elevation gain, then hike another 2 km along the mountain ridge before reaching the hut. But the reward is tremendous: the grand view over the valley is just amazing. I took this photograph at 1.40am on 6 July 2016, while the Milky Way centre had moved towards the west just above the mountain ridge. The tiny Liverpool Hut down the valley illustrated the scale of this giant mountain range. The far left side red light was from Wanaka downtown - 60 km away from Mount Aspiring. This panorama image was a result of 8 successive shots stitching together covering 180 degree wide view from left to right. Thanks for viewing this image.

Norah Head Lighthouse is located in Norah Head, the Entrance in the central coast of New South Wales. This image was taken in Spring 2015. This image was a panorama consisting of 12 successive shots on two rows in order to completely capture the entire Milky Way. Soon after sunset, the Milky Way was just across over the lighthouse while the sunset light still illuminated the horizon. Thanks for viewing this image.

Going to the mountains has become my passion of experiencing the wilderness, which has not to be for a photography purpose. The raw and vast mountainous features always give me more emotional responses than any other places. This image was taken in December 2015 during my New Zealand Alps expedition. We woke up at 4:00am. By looking at the dark sky, we knew that the morning light would be interesting. Not far from our campsite, we went to this tarn and found that it actually provided a beautiful illustration of the mountain surroundings at such magic moment. Thanks for viewing this image.

Why did these peaks shine in red? Well, this was a question I asked myself when I firstly captured such amazing phenomenon in late April 2016 in Patagonia Los Glaciares National Park. Eventually, I discovered that in a clear night, when the moon started to rise above horizon, moonlight could lighten up Fitz Roy peaks and made them shine in red. But such red shining effect varied significantly in terms of the duration, intensity and appearance time depending on the size of moon phase. From late April to mid May 2016, I spent a great deal of time to observe this amazing phenomenon from different locations in Los Glaciares National Park. By the end, I got good knowledge about the phenomenon of rising moonlight shining effect on Fitz Roy peaks. Another interesting discovery was: it seemed that such phenomenon did not exist for other mountain peaks such as Cerro Torre peaks. This image was one of the four images I captured successfully such phenomenon. What made this image special was that the Milky Way was also moving down enough towards the mountain peaks at 7:00am local time so that the red peaks of Fitz Roy and Milky Way were captured together with one frame from a 14mm wide angle focal length. The foreground of this image was captured successively with another frame. The entire process of capturing this image took 15 hours from the beginning of arriving at this high location to the time of getting down the hill after sunrise. According to our calculation, the chance of capturing the Milky Way and moonlight red peaks of Fitz Roy together is very slim, probably less than 5 times throughout a calendar year in Los Glaciares National Peak. Thanks for viewing this image.