Sutton Sunset

The Sutton landscape summons me to Rohan in The Lord of the Rings. Golden grasses and jagged schist cover the landscape. These seemingly go on forever, until they hit the Rock and Pillar Range in the northwest which always stands in shadow at this time of the day. Sutton. I wanted to be at Pukerangi to shoot the railway shelter illuminated by the last rays of the setting sun. Pukerangi (then Barewood) was a railway stop that opened in 1891. It later became important as a signalling point to control traffic through the Taieri Gorge. In the 1990s the majority of the once-great Otago Central Railway rails were pulled up, and now Pukerangi serves as the last stop of the Taieri Gorge Train. With Pukerangi in mind for the target, I turned off the highway onto Pukerangi Road. Shortly before the shared road and rail bridge I came across this railway hut catching the sun. I made a few compositions, all with the sun lighting the hut, trying to capture a few different ideas. I started by making…