Echoes of Mordor

Photographer

Noelle Bennett

Category

Fine Art Photography - Photomanipulation

Company

Submission Group

Amateur

Year

2026

Country / Region:

New Zealand

I was seeking to produce an image that was dark, yet majestic; that had a sense of foreboding with maybe just a glimmer of hope, so this image was all about showing how the scene felt. It's composed of a total of six images which were all taken on the same day but in different areas of a place called Clay Cliffs which is in Omarama, South Island, New Zealand. The RAW files were live stacked (this is not the same as focus stacking) and blended together using the Maximum stack operator which truly brought out the drama of the scene. Converting the resulting single image to black and white completed that feeling of majesty and foreboding for me.