Vladimir Medvedev's Image

Peyto Lake in Banff National Park, Canada, is renowned for its beautiful colour.

The milky turquoise-blue tint is caused by light bouncing off silt suspended in the water – glacial milk – the result of the grinding action of the glaciers that feed it. ‘On clear days, the light in the morning and in the evening is too weak to capture its beauty,’ says Vladimir. ‘During the day, the light is too harsh.’ The solution, he decided, was to wait for a snowfall to soften the light. But that proved logistically challenging. ‘In spring, the lake vanishes beneath the ice,’ he says. ‘In autumn, it snowed only twice.’ But on one of those occasions, Vladimir was able to get there in time to catch the brief lull just after one snowstorm and before the next. The light was perfect, he says, ‘with the sun setting over the horizon and on the opposite side, a new storm front approaching’.