Blue Morning Ranges

Low cloud presses down over a distant range on the Monaro near Cooma, cutting off the upper slopes and leaving a pale band of misty grey above the golden-brown mid-ground. A broken timber fence line winds through the pasture, its posts leaning at irregular angles. A small group of stock graze in the middle distance, and three conical dark-green trees anchor the lower right corner. Diffused overcast light flattens the shadows across the open country.

Brett photographed this on the morning of 27 December 2016, on the Nikon D810 with an 80-400mm lens. The Landscapes collection covers his wider travel photography across Australia and Japan rather than the abandoned-places work the Lost Collective is built on, and no documented history attaches to this stretch of grazing country. The cloud is more the subject than the range beneath it: it cuts the mountains off at a hard line and takes the top of them out of the picture entirely. The leaning posts are the only human mark in the frame and they carry the eye across the open ground. Flat light removes the shadows and reduces the whole thing to tone, dry grass against green slope.