Frozen

Nick's captured some unbelievable light in this Icelandic landscape. Not only are the incredible sunset tones sublime, he's found a composition in the scene that works well, using blocks of frozen ice to anchor the foreground. In lighting conditions like these it can be tricky to balance the tones in the bright sky and dark foreground, but Nick has masterfully done a stellar job at controlling the light with his range of filters. It's a truly incredible landscape and one worthy of the top spot in this month's Frozen contest - congratulations Nick!

Richard's wintry scene is full of fantastic depth from the frozen waterfall in the foreground, lone tree in the mid-ground with mountains and clouds following in the background. His long exposure time of 300 seconds works well too, juxtaposing the frozen water with blurry clouds in the sky - great job!

Dominic’s Ice Queen portrait instantly stood out to us and works brilliantly well with our 'frozen' theme this month. We love the studio lighting, post-production as well as all of the props, costumes and make-up that brought his wintry portrait image together - great job!

There's a lot to like about Wim's winter landscape, from the beautiful 'Alpenglow' lighting up the tip of the Matterhorn and the uniform lines in the snow that look almost raked, these do a great job of guiding the eye through the frame. We think the balance would work better if the Matterhorn was larger in the frame and the lead-in lines weren't so prominent, perhaps using a longer telephoto lens to compress the perspective and getting closer to the ground.

This is a fantastic scene full of wonderful details from the icy rocks to cascading waterfalls that Jean has turned into a fantastic blur with a long exposure. My only slight issue with the image is that some of the tones in the snow and ice have clipped and overexposed. This is always tricky to control when shooting snow, though in future it may be worth taking a second underexposed frame to preserve highlight detail and then merge the two shots together for a single image with all the tones needed.

Erika must have been spoilt for choice when choosing which of these fantastic ice structures to frame up on in 'diamond' beach in Iceland. Her 'boomerang' shaped ice block is certainly eye catching and works tremendously well as foreground interest, leading the eye towards the brilliant sunset afterglow in the background.

Gilbert's captured a wonderfully minimal winter landscape here, with a snowy foreground, lone tree in the middle of the horizon and a fantastic sky full of misty clouds above. Our only small issues with this picture are that we'd have liked to have seen the tree be perfectly central in the frame to make the frame symmetrical and also the image submitted was quite lo-res so difficult to zoom in and see the details.

This is an astonishingly good frozen bubble shot that Zeltner has captured in amazing detail with her Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM lens. The ice patterns in the frozen bubble are pin-sharp, crystal clear and absolutely fascinating to look at - the gentle backlighting also helps it glisten and bring it to life. Great job!

Edward has caught a magical moment on this frosty winter morning with the stag standing stoically in frozen grasses and cold breath backlit by the morning sun. There's some wonderfully soft and gentle golden light illuminating the scene and giving it a serene quality and the shallow depth of field does a great job at blurring the background and making sure his subject stands out.

Jacquie has taken an amazing landscape here that fits our 'frozen' brief wonderfully well. We love the sunrise colours reflected in the ice which has a glassy sheen and the looming snow-capped mountains in the background too. We think getting lower to the ice to make the fantastic methane bubbles a little larger in the frame would really help anchor the foreground and show them in better detail. Minor niggles aside it's a brilliant winter landscape worthy of a place in our top ten this month!

This is a fantastic action shot of Maggie bounding through the air as she plays in the snow. It's a wonderful moment but the light is quite flat and the snow looks quite dark and muddy. This could potentially be brightened in the Raw edit. The other issue is that Maggie is very central in the frame, but it would work better if she was composed to be on the left side of the shot as this would give her plenty of 'active' space to move into.

Nick's done brilliantly well to come away with some stunning Ptarmigan images which must have been extraordinarily difficult to photograph in the middle of a blizzard as they're so perfectly camouflaged in the snow. We love the pose and interaction between the two birds in this frame and the male's red eye crest really leaps out against the rest of the very mono scene and draws the eye in.

Gary's snowy landscape certainly fits our 'Frozen' brief and is packed with some incredible detail. We love how he's used the natural landscape to frame the pool and used a long exposure of 2.5 seconds to blur the water creating these fantastic misty patterns which really compliment the pin-sharp rock formations on either side of the waterfall. The mono conversion also works brilliantly, allowing Gary to boost the contrast even further - great job!

Ron's captured a wonderful snowy winter landscape here with the fantastic red train popping out of its muted snowy surroundings, the steam bellowing out the top of the train also adds bags of drama and atmosphere. It can be tricky to retain detail in snow without it clipping and overexposing so Ron's done a great job here to make sure that didn't happen and all of the lovely detail remains intact - great job!

Steve's winter shot really made us look twice, a quality found in every great image. His aerial perspective works brilliantly well, is full of contrast and abstract lines and shapes. Unfortunately, there's no EXIF data so we can't tell if it was taken on Canon or not, but being an aerial image it was most likely shot on a drone.... It is however a cracking shot so well done for thinking outside of the box!