Zhangjiajie — Hallelujah Mountains Cloud Sea
1,149.00 $
The sandstone pillar mountains of Zhangjiajie — the inspiration for Avatar’s floating Hallelujah Mountains — photographed from Tianzi Mountain above a full cloud inversion, their forested summits emerging as islands.
Description
Zhangjiajie National Forest Park in Hunan Province contains the world’s largest concentration of quartzite sandstone pillars — over 3,000 individual columns rising up to 300 metres from the subtropical valley floor, their vertical sides hosting hanging forests of pine and broad-leaved species. When temperature inversions create cloud sea conditions most common in autumn and winter — the cloud fills the valleys completely while the pillar summits project above the white surface like forested islands in an aerial ocean. This photograph was made from the Tianzi Mountain ridge at the park’s highest accessible point — 1,260 metres — using a 400mm telephoto lens to compress the distant pillars into a denser arrangement than the eye perceives. The cloud sea is mid-level, leaving the upper 30–50 metres of each pillar visible above the cloud while completely concealing their bases and the valley geography.
