Fine Art nominee

For the long‑exposure shot, I looked for a stable spot on the shore while the wind whipped across the lake and raindrops continuously hammered against the camera. My tripod slowly sank into the soft ground, and I had to readjust it several times to achieve a steady composition. At the same time, I tried to keep the raindrops off the lens—an endless race against the elements.
Yet it was precisely in this harsh weather that the image’s unique atmosphere emerged: the long exposure smoothed the water into an almost mirror‑like surface, the dark silhouettes of the pines stood out clearly, and the rain gave the scene a melancholic, almost timeless mood.

Mona Moraht, born in Hamburg, started photographing already at school using her father’s medium format camera. She bought her first SLR camera in 1998 – still analogue at the time. Meanwhile, the Canon 5D Mark IV is her permanent companion. Since 2016, photography of abandoned places takes her all across Europe. Furthermore, architecture, landscape, and nature photography are her preferred domains. Several of her works have won awards at national and international competitions (see the following link: https://mona-moraht-photography.de/awards). Moraht is a member of the German Photographic Association (DVF) (https://www.dvf-fotografie.de), the International Federation of Photographic Art (FIAP), Luxembourg (https://www.fiap.net) and the Photographic Society of America (PSA), USA (https://psa-photo.org). She has been awarded the „EFIAP/s“ of the FIAP and the „PPSA“ of the PSA. Moraht lives and works in Berlin.