‘The vista was all blue skies, mountains, lake, sand and, in the middle of all of it, this lady’: Jessica Chou’s best phone picture

On a celebratory road trip at Lake Tahoe, the photographer spotted an umbrella on a beach ...

I just loved how the scene stacked up that day, under the strong morning light," says Jessica Chou. The photographer was celebrating her husband's birthday with a road trip from Los Angeles, where the pair were living, to San Francisco, then out east, stopping in Lake Tahoe before heading to Utah.

We knew Lake Tahoe as a ski spot in the winter, so it was nice to see it during the summertime," she says. The day we stopped there, the vista was all blue skies, snow-capped mountains, calm lake, miles of sand and, in the middle of all of it, this lady, who had staked out a piece of shade."