Dramatic

You don't see a lot of water polo shots on here and that probably helped this stand out from the crowd, as well as the terrific composition and sense of action aided by the water droplets and expression of the defender. Shooting sports at night under lights can be really difficult and I'd have been really happy to take this shot.

The last image to make my top-10 is this Suffolk landscape/cloudscape. The flat horizon and largely featureless foreground left plenty of room for the drama of the gathering storm. The path leads you to the horizon and the lighthouse provides a nice contrasting focal point. Arguably the sky isn't as dramatic as in many of the landscapes entered, but I felt that others were often too heavily processed and took the reality out of the scene. There were also some terrific landscapes that were just too serene for the theme. This image, in my opinion, struck the right balance.

No - I've no idea what's going on either, but I know I like it. Sharp edges against the hand of a mostly hidden human, dark skies. It's minimalist, unusual, disturbing and, yes, dramatic - you just have to invent your own story around it. I've made all my picks and written my reviews on the first day of crowd voting so I've no idea where this will end up, but I suspect it won't be to everyone's taste. Well done.

Where are Health & Safety when you need them? Dramatic? It's a crocodile in the water with tourists for crying out loud! The photographer apparently took 8 shots then got out of the water. That's 8 more than I would have...

It takes some nerve to shoot a situation like this, especially up close, and I take my hat off to you. The composition and back-lighting are terrific, the expressions and body language convey a superb sense of drama. It could be a scene from a thriller, but it isn't: it's a scene from life. A well-deserved win.

Read the photographer's description then look again. I know ... gross. But that's the drama of the natural world for you - red in tooth and claw. Given the actual main subject of this tale, the diagonal composition leading you from bottom left to top right works very well. Well done, and yuck.

I wanted to include a dramatic seascape and this was the only one that didn't feature a lighthouse. OK, not quite true, and maybe there is a lighthouse in this shot, but the waves are such that we can't see it. Either way, I felt that this best captured the drama of the sea in a pure way, without other distractions.

There is real-world drama here, although the responders on the right look very casual! Some will be uncomfortable with the idea of taking a shot in such circumstances, but this what street and reportage photographers do: they show the world as it unfolds for better and for worse.

I liked this image when I first saw it: there's drama; there's splashing; there are teeth. But revisiting it during the judging process I found the diagonal angle of water increasingly distracting. I assume, from the tight crop, this is dutch tilt done in post rather than a really big wave and I kept wondering what the original, wider shot would have looked like.

Another image that won't be to everyone's taste and I'm sure quite a few will say it shouldn't have been taken. They are entitled to their opinions and I questioned its inclusion in my top-10 before deciding in its favour. Personally, I don't shoot homeless people when out doing street photography - they are soft targets and you can easily step over the line into exploitation. However, some people are part of an important story that the world should be shown and reminded of. Who, when and where we are is largely an accident of birth. Imagine yourself living her life instead of yours.

This almost made it into my top 10. There's no background info to what's going on, but I'm assuming it wasn't a real fight! I really like the use of negative space, the way the sword leads the eye to its wielder and the motion blur of both combatants. The fact that it's not pin sharp doesn't matter at all.

Not the only bird-attacks-bird photo entered, and several of the others were good too, but this one stood out for me due to the way they are looking at each other. They have an almost human quality to them and it reminded me of a fight I once saw in the school playground. Nice framing and shallow depth-of-field too.

Lots of people entered animal shots, and quite reasonably as there is plenty of drama to be found in the natural world. Several made it into my top-10, but ahead of all those animals attacking each other I went for this one. Why? Eye-contact and the knowledge that the potential meal it was weighing up was holding the camera.

I liked the montage approach to tell a dramatic real story, making this an unusual entry to the competition. It is a reporting technique that is open to misuse and subjective rewriting of a narrative (not that I'm suggesting you've done that here) so must always be used with care.