Nelson Lakes National Park on New Zealand’s South Island is one of the lesser visited, not because of a lack of beauty but rather because it’s a little off the major route of most tourists who travel straight between Abel Tasman National Park and the West Coast. As the name suggests Lake Rotoiti, the “small lake”, is the smaller of the two large lakes in this park, with Lake Rotoroa, the “big lake”, being the other one. The village of Saint Arnaud on the shores of Lake Rotoiti is the starting point for explorations here.

What a difference a night makes! After a day of pretty mixed weather with rather nasty intervals, I had taken virtually the same photo as this one the evening before – the mountains to the left had no tops and were more like an unstructured wall of trees, the ones in the distance simply weren’t there, with rain blocking the view. Yet, there was hope for different weather as the sun sometimes was almost visible above the clouds though it didn’t manage to break through. The next morning, I was in a different world. With the sun on the north-eastern side of the lake, the shadows emphasized the lines into the image that were already formed by the mountains and the jetty, giving a sense of the length of the lake, drawing you towards the bay at the end where the walking tracks head up into the mountains.

The photograph was made with a Canon EOS 6D and an EF 35mm f/2 IS USM lens. The exposure was 1/125 second at f/8 and ISO 200. The photograph was edited in Adobe Lightroom. You can find all of these photos along with others from this journey across New Zealand’s South Island in my album New Zealand 2013 or on Flickr.