Autumn and winter travel

Im a big fan of this shot, the colours shout autumn, and the vibrant orange contrasts beautifully with the darker tones behind. I do feel it would benefit enormously by having the left hand side cropped off though. In woodland images, the sky is often your enemy. The bright highlights where it shows through invevitably draw the eye and make a focal point of the one area that you don't want to be. By simply covering those highlights with your hand you can see how it switches the balance of the whole image so the leaves and the end of the path become much more dominant. A 4x5 crop to the right would have made this higher in my top 10, as the rest of the image is superb

Another bird image in my top 10, but once again its the powerful use of contrast that sets the shot apart. Technically excellent, there is a great tonal range in the crow (my knowledge of Corvids is limited so I'll run with crow!), it complements the snow and background beautifully. My once criticism would be the large area of white at the bottom rather dominates. I can see the photographer has used this to stop the branch breaking the frame edge at the bottom and I can see why, but I think a tighter crop to above this area ad losing the tree on the left would have really distilled the image into its key components and been even more striking. Its still a succesful and attention grabbing image as it is though.

A landscape and conditions like this are a photographers dream, and must be an awe inspiring place to visit. In this instance I think they have fallen into the all too common trap of trying to include everything before them into a shot. Its incredibly difficulty to convey the atmosphere, the cold, the vastness of a scene like this into a still image, so it often pays to distill the scene into its key components. With a wide angle lens like this, by turning the camera 90 degrees into portrait orientation, movign forward and shooting slightly downwards, it would have filled the foreground with the dramatic lines of the broken ice, leading the eye over the frozen lake to the dramatic mountain backdrop, and made for a much more successful image.

This has all the ingredients for a classic Autumn image. Rich colours, mist to add depth and separation, and a woodland path to lead you nicely into the shot. If I were to offer any criticism, I think the photographer has overdone the soft focus 'Orton Effect' a little, and I would like to have seen a little more foreground to add another level of interest. The grasses and bracken bottom right add some welcome variation, and I think with more of this detail included along the bottom of the image it would have lifted the shot up another level. Overall though a very enjoyable shot.