Ashburton Lakes are tucked into the foothills of the Southern Alps, approximately west of Christchurch on the South Island of New Zealand. The area is hot and dry grassland in the Summer. But we thought the best time to visit was just after some fresh snow.

Lake Heron is the largest of several lakes in the area (Lakes Clearwater and Camp are other favourites). Another excellent photo location - Mount Sunday, the Lord of the Rings film location for Edoras, is also in the area. We stayed at a small holiday rental in nearby Mount Somers village on this visit.

We usually travelled in our motorhome, but as we didn't know the area and it was the middle of winter, we didn't want to risk getting snowed in with frozen pipework! The drive to the lakes each morning was interesting as the loose gravel roads had frozen (temps were down to around - 11C) and were a bit unpredictable. But the roads are generally very good as long as you take it easy (not easy to do when you're running late, and you can see colour creeping into the morning sky!).

This shot across Lake Heron was taken just as the sun was about to set behind the mountains. We were initially disappointed at the lack of clouds to provide some sunset colour, but the lack of wind enabled some amazing reflections. So we couldn't complain!

I decided to place the rounded hill in the centre as I felt this, together with the reflection, gave the image a balanced and almost graphical feel. A tripod was needed for the shot as light levels were falling, but apart from that, the only difficulty was my frozen fingertips!