Aoiike

Turquoise water fills the lower half of the frame, the colour intense enough to read almost artificial against the pale cloud and muted brown forest behind. Bare larch trunks rise from the pond and repeat below in reflection, the long exposure holding the surface still enough to carry each branch with precision. A gnarled, multi-branched tree in the mid-ground draws the eye left of centre, anchoring the composition between sky and water.

Aoiike, the Blue Pond, sits at Shirogane near Biei in Hokkaido, and it was never built to be looked at. Mount Tokachi erupted in 1988, and erosion-control works were carried out on the Biei River to protect the town from volcanic mudflows. A concrete weir blocked the river's flow, water pooled behind it, and the pond formed as an unintended result. The larches standing in the water are the trees that were caught when the ground around their roots went under. Brett photographed it on 10 February 2014, on the Nikon D810. The Landscapes collection covers his wider travel photography across Australia and Japan rather than the abandoned-places work the Lost Collective is built on. The colour is the reason people come, and it is a side effect nobody designed.