My daughter Eve moved with her family to Airdrie, near Calgary, in August last year; Rob and I flew out west in December, to spend their first Christmas there with them.

The Kroukamps are keen hikers and climbers, and so over the course of ten days we made three long day trips out to the Rocky Mountains - to Kananaskis, Banff and Lake Louise, and across the provincial border, to Radium Hot Springs in British Columbia.

It was my first exposure to the Rockies - exposure, in terms both of weather and photography - and although the snow was not heavy and the weather not particularly cold, the range upon range of vast, snow-clad, sheer cliff faces and mountain peaks was almost heartbreakingly, dramatically beautiful.

I could have made a hundred photographs just standing in one spot, and no possible number of photographs could possibly exhaust the infinite vistas that unfolded before us.