Black and White

Strong eye contact is the key to making a good portrait and it's not something his image is lacking with his two young models staring straight down the lens barrel which makes for a very engaging shot. He's focused perfectly, making sure nearest eyes are pin-sharp and used a mid aperture of f/6.3 to ensure both faces were in sharp focus. It's a wonderful shot, made even better with his dramatic mono processing.

Gary has taken an incredible portrait of this lion shaking its mane. He's caught a fantastic expression on its face and the lighting picks out his facial features and fur beautifully. Gary's work in post-processing has also paid dividends with his moody mono conversion and darkening the outside edges to spotlight his subject.

Gary's captured a fantastic landscape, using the form of the hills to create brilliant lead-in lines that guide the viewer's eye towards the lone tree which makes for a perfect focal point. The black and white conversion works fantastically well with the moody sky and atmosphere.

This is a fantastic shot that shows off the architecture of the Sheikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi. He's done a great job of framing the mosque within this arch structure in the foreground which creates a frame-within-a-frame and makes for a strong composition. It's also symmetrical and the contrast between the darker foreground and sky really allow the brighter buildings to stand out.

By pointing his camera upwards Marco has found an interesting angle on the Gehry Building. The long exposure also works well, blurring the clouds nicely and the light reflected off of the building adds some fantastic contrast that really suits the mono toning.

Andrew's fantastic aerial shot impressed us this month with its brilliant contrast, graphic patterns and abstract shapes - we had to look twice to truly appreciate this impressive image. Whatsmore the image was taken with a fairly old Canon EOS 5D Mark II and just goes to show you don't always need the latest kit to bag amazing images.

Michael has taken a brilliantly moody and atmospheric minimalist landscape that suits a black and white conversion perfectly, although his slight blue toning also works well. Our only slight critique is that the foreground shoreline takes the eye out of the frame and would have been better including the whole curve of the shoreline to guide the eye through to the background. Small issue aside it's a great job!

This is a brilliant shot that's certainly very different from anything else we've seen in this contest. The aerial shot has a fantastic amount of depth, detail and character to it and to make it even more impressive was taken with a kit lens! The focusing is spot on with the spitfire nice and sharp, and the shutter speed just slow enough at 1/200 sec to catch a bit of motion in the propellers - stellar job!

Clementina has captured a lovely portrait here using a long telephoto 200mm lens to compress the perspective and create a wonderful shallow depth of field with the wide f/2.8 aperture. This really helps her subject stand out from the background and gives her image a 3D quality, the eyes of her model are also pin-sharp and provide the perfect focal point.

Laura's portrait is elegant, wonderfully choreographed and beautifully captured. The model's pose looks effortless and the lighting adds some brilliant contrast, illuminating her and the white dress while keeping the background dark and punchy. It's perfect for a black and white treatment - great job!

Dave's shot stood out not only because he's been able to shoot on an unusual and unique location that we don't get to see very often, but he's also shot at night and with heavy smoke to add buckets of atmosphere and turn the figures into striking silhouettes. Great job!

Henry's created a fantastic action shot here by taking two shots of his model Zoe and making a composite image of her fighting herself. He's got a brilliant imagination and vision for a shot and his execution is spot-on. Great job!

Jay's shot of Glencoe in Scotland has it all - fantastic crashing waterfalls in the foreground, a lone tree on the left of the frame in the mid-ground and the brilliant mountain surrounded by atmospheric clouds in the distance give this landscape enormous depth. Great job!

Allan's shot is full of dramatic lighting and atmosphere with incredible rays of light illuminating the dark and smokey room that his two protagonists are standing in. The light from the window behind has also backlit them, transforming the two men into fantastic silhouettes. Great job!

We're always looking for images that stand out from the crowd and Henrik's wonderful portrait does exactly that. It's a beautiful portrait with the model's pose and natural expression, but Henrik has added a stunning reflection to the bottom third of the frame using a piece of glass to add some extra interest and balance. Great job!