A breathtaking photograph of Milford Sound showcasing a double arc of the Milky Way has won a prestigious international photography award.<\/p>\n
Spanish photographer Mikel Iraeta took out the Open Nature and Landscape Category at the 2026 Epson International Pano Awards with his image, Double Arch on Milford Sound. <\/p>\n
The photograph, made up of 107 individual images, captured the night sky above the Fiordland landscape, with the Milky Way stretching about the mountains. <\/p>\n
Iraeta described capturing the image as “almost impossible”, given Milford Sound’s notoriously wet weather. <\/p>\n
“It is very difficult to have an entire clear night with no rain, no clouds, no moon,” he said. <\/p>\n
Milford Sound experienced rain around 300 days a year, with Iraeta saying the access road had been closed due to avalanche risk just a day before the photograph was taken.<\/p>\n
In a post shared to Instagram, he said the win had come as a surprise as it was his first time entering the competition. <\/p>\n
“Truth is I didn’t expect that, although I imagine everyone who wins says the same thing,” Iraeta wrote. <\/p>\n
He said the recognition was particularly special because of his passion for nighttime photography \u2014 a discipline he believed was rarely seen among the top entries. <\/p>\n
The Epson International Pano Awards were the world’s largest annual competition dedicated to panoramic photography. <\/p>\n
Spanish photographers also claimed the competition’s two top honours, with Daniel Vi\u00f1\u00e9 Garcia named Open Photographer of the Year and Tom\u00e1s S\u00e1nchez Ruiz taking out Amateur Photographer of the Year.<\/p>\n
The morning’s headlines in 90 seconds, including connections between gangs and politicians cause more election drama, a speedy rescue in Australian floods, and why Donald Trump’s angry at LeBron James. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A breathtaking photograph of Milford Sound showcasing a double arc of the Milky Way has won a prestigious…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":937567,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[449,45529,458,459,64,63,460,134,75,127292],"class_list":["post-937566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-culture","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-environment","tag-southland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=937566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/937567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=937566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=937566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=937566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}