Burma, aka Myanmar, is long way from Rochester, N.Y., home of Dick Bennett Photography, but Bennett struck photography gold there recently.

Bennett was awarded a LexJet Sunset Award at the Photo North East competition for the image he captured during a trip with a group of photographers last November and December to Burma’s Shan Plateau. It was the only image out of about a thousand in the competition to score 100.

Though it’s somewhat monochromatic, the shades of golden hues that permeate the image, along with the perfection of its composition, were elements that obviously impressed the judges.

“It gets very warm in the afternoon and cold at night, creating a real nice mist in the morning. We got up for each of the sunrises, and one day about half an hour after sunrise I saw a hut on stilts with a pyramid shaped roof,” recalls Bennett. “It was a real golden hour for the light. It lasted about a minute and a half and when the person in the hut moved into the perfect position I took a couple of shots. About 30 seconds later, it was gone.”

Bennett used a Canon EOS 5D Mark III, and captured the scene at 125 mm, 1/1600 seconds, ISO 400 and f/10. Bennett adds that he did very little photo manipulation, sharpening the hills and mountains in the background and taking out small distracting items here and there.