Beech forest, Eglinton Valley, Fiordland National Park

Fiordland, a land renowned for its phenomenal rainfall and majestic glacially-carved mountains and valleys, makes up the southwestern part of the South Island. The world-famous Milford Track is located here, winding its way from Milford to Lake Te Anau through a variety of environments from perpetually-wet lowland rainforest through to high alpine tussock fields, delighting visitors with scenery on a truly grand scale.

The beech forest featured in this photograph is in the upper Eglinton Valley near Lake Gunn, near the departure point for the famous Routeburn Track. The place I chose to photograph had all the stages of life in this forest contained in it, from young beech 'poles' to towering giant adult trees, through to wind-torn branches and their eventual decay into rotting, moss-covered logs on which grew the seedlings of a new generation of trees.

The mosses in particular were most impressive, forming a dense mat on rotting logs and on the ground -- I often sank knee-deep into this mattress-like layer as I walked through the forest in search of places to photograph. In fact I hardly ever saw the true forest floor at all, these mosses were so adundant.