The tourists went to see the Buddhist sculptures. I walked the other way.
This photograph was taken in the valley of Amarbayasgalant Monastery — one of the most sacred places in Mongolia, a country I have been visiting for many years as a tour guide. While my group explored the monastery grounds, I climbed a hillside alone and found a single tree standing on the ridge against an open sky.
I photographed it nine times in succession, handheld, letting each frame shift slightly from the last. The camera stacked all nine exposures into a single image in-camera. What emerged was not one tree but a procession of the same tree — the same shape repeated across layers of grey, growing fainter and smaller as it recedes, like an echo, or a memory fading in stages.
At 300mm, the distant steppe compresses into horizontal bands. The layering of the multiple exposure turns those bands into something almost graphic — a landscape reduced to its essential geometry, the curve of a hill, a tree, the sky.
This print works in spaces that value stillness and restraint. The image asks nothing of you immediately — but it rewards time spent with it.
EXIF data of the photograph
- Camera Model: NIKON Z 7
- Lens model: TAMRON SP 70-300mm F4-5.6 Di VC USD
- Date taken: 6. 7. 2026
- Exposure time: 1/320s
- F-Number: f/9.0
- ISO speed ratings: 200
- Focal length: 300mm
- Size of the photo: 8256 x 5504px
