‘You can imagine it’s you, standing there on the edge’: Atle Rønningen’s best phone picture

“Eskil is a tough guy,” Atle Rønningen says of the friend he was hiking Pulpit Rock with. “It’s a massive cliff over 600 metres high, in Preikestolen, Norway. It’s so popular and busy in the summer months, so we went in the spring as soon as the snow had gone. It was still icy in some places, and the weather changed abruptly all day,” he says.

It was fortunate Eskil had no fear of heights, Rønningen adds, because as he approached the ledge, the rain had turned to snow and the wind had picked up. Even so, the guys kept their goal in mind. “We wanted to show how capable mobile phone photography is,” Rønningen explains. “This was 2014, so Instagram was very new and few people knew how to take good pictures using their phone. We wanted to show what could be done.”

While he made a few minor changes in the editing app VSCO, Rønningen insists the muted tones replicate reality. “There is little difference between the before and after version,” he says. “The scenery itself is beautiful, and we were very lucky with the atmosphere and the light that day. Sometimes bad weather is a blessing: it makes the best pictures.”

After another friend encouraged him to enter, the shot made the shortlist for the 2015 Sony World Photography awards. “It was surprising for me that the picture reached the top of the charts, but it was very fun,” Rønningen says. “Reflecting on it a decade on, it makes me want to go hiking. Eskil gives an extra dimension to the landscape; you can imagine it’s you, standing there on the edge.”