Myrtle Mountain Road

Rough asphalt stretches toward a bright gap in the canopy on Myrtle Mountain Road in the Bega Valley, shot from near ground level so the road's worn surface fills the lower frame. A single band of sunlight runs down the centreline, splitting deep shadow on the left from softer light on the right. Eucalypt and fern press close on both sides, and the road narrows into the green as it bends gently left before the trees thin out.

Brett photographed this at midday on 18 December 2016, on the Nikon D810 with a 14-24mm lens held low to the surface, which is what gives the cracked bitumen its weight in the frame. 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 history attaches to this stretch of forest road. The picture is the road and the one band of sun that splits it. The canopy closes overhead, the ferns come right to the verge, and the bend takes the rest of it out of sight, which is the whole proposition: a road climbing into green with no indication of where it comes out.