"One of the most wonderful things about landscape photography, and in fact all photography I suspect, is the extraordinary element of surprise. You can be travelling along, and I am sure other photographers would agree with me, you can be travelling along, walking along, cycling along, and suddenly you will notice something that is a piece of absolute magic, and it is hard to describe the elation that one feels at such an event. It's truly almost, as I once called it, a quasi-religious experience. And oh my, when I got to west of Child Okeford at Cranborne Chase in Dorset in 2017 and found these trees in this extraordinary state of part blue and part pale orange yellow colour, it was just the most marvellous experience. So, I set myself up and within a very, very short time I made the image, probably only a matter of 20 minutes. What was intriguing was, and that was very strange for me, I was suddenly aware of the middle distance being slightly soft, and yet the far distance being sharp, and of course the front of the image being sharp. And the blue trees were blue to my eye, and sometimes it's a consequence of the material, the media you are using, be it digital or film, but it was just the most wonderful phenomenon. And then I found out what was responsible for the unsharp area in the middle of the image, and it was a breeze that had just blown through a tunnel as it were, and only affected that middle area, hence the front of the image being sharp and the rear being sharp. So, it was particularly beautiful the way there was this misty sea of grasses that were very indistinct. The whole thing just gave me immense joy, immense spiritual joy to be quite honest, and looking at it now I find this image evokes precisely what I felt at the time. For me, that's the mark of a rewarding photograph, and hopefully, that's transmitted to others."  Charlie Waite