When we think of good light for landscapes, we think first of the golden light of morning and evening. Yet expressively rich images of landscapes can also be made on a cloudy day, particularly if the air is misty and the sky overcast. For years I have been looking forward to photographing the spectacular mountain scenery on Guilin’s Li River, yet when that day finally came, the sun was obscured by a bright overcast of clouds. I made the best of what nature gave me, relying on that obscurity to challenge the imagination. This image is my favorite from that day – it evokes mighty scale and the forces of nature at work over the centuries. The sheer limestone cliffs soaring over the river into a misty sky dwarf the four riverboats ahead of us, creating powerful scale incongruity. The mountains are delicately painted in green, and forests flow from their flanks down to the river. My choice of a cloudy white balance setting warms the bright sky with a bronze glow reminiscent of a 19th century painting. I increased the saturation of this glow later in Photoshop to bring the image to what we see here