Mother nature

Steve's fantastic shot of Osprey flying towards us with its impressive haul in tow takes the top spot this month. The image's overall muted colour palette really helps the osprey's vibrant yellow eyes to stand out, which he's masterfully made sure are pin-sharp and the clear focal point. His rapid shutter speed of 1/1600 sec has frozen the moment in time, making the water spray razor sharp and the wide aperture of f/4 has blurred the background so all of our attention is directed towards this impressive bird of prey in action. Great job!

This is a fantastic moment in time captured well by Håkan and we're sure there's the making of a fantastic photograph here. The image quality is quite poor suggesting that a better quality camera and less JPEG compression would be beneficial. Unfortunately no EXIF data has been supplied so we can't check if it's been taken on a Canon system either for this Canon-only contest. This photographer is clearly very skilled to be able to catch such a precise moment but some adjustments to the composition and image quality would have made it all the more eye catching for us. Best of luck in the future!

This is a fantastic scene from Chenh Hong who reached the peak of Hehuan Mountain in Taiwan to catch the sun illuminating his landscape and the low-altitude clouds. His composition works well and he's done brilliantly well to retain such a good dynamic range of tones while shooting directly into the sun too. We also love the starburst effect he's achieved in the sun which is from using a high aperture value.

Benjamin’s adorable picture of a duckling was taken on the Danube river in Austria and stood out clearly against the powerful storms, hurricanes and lightning strikes that were submitted this month, but his gentle picture is just as impressive. He used a long 150-600mm telephoto to make sure his tiny subject filled the frame well and got down low so he was eye level with his subject, which has worked really well and given him a nice clean background. The colour palette is subdued and gentle, adding to the overall theme of his shot and he’s been sure to focus on the eye too making sure this is the obvious focal point. Keep up the great work!