Landscape nominee

After just under four months of darkness, the sun reaches the horizon just close enough to illuminate the tips snow-capped mountains of southern Svalbard. Two days before the first sunrise of the year, whilst on board the plane to Longyearbyen, sitting in the aisle seat on, what I thought was a fully-booked flight, I was completely unaware of the beauty revealing itself kilometres below. On a walk through the cabin, I realised that the rearmost row of seats was empty, so I rushed for my camera, took the window seat, and started shooting through the dirty window, at a very high iso. The plane, moving swiftly above the icy sea and jagged mountains, added extra difficulty in composing and securing focus. Despite these technical limitations, this serendipitous moment led to a unique sequence of photographs, that showcase the vast beauty of the frozen, Arctic world of Svalbard from an angle and time of year very rarely seen.