Mother Nature, the Artist

This is the perfect money-shot capture. The rushing and breaking waves cascading over the foreground rocks. The amazingly dramatic shapes of the land forms, the texture in the rock and the specular reflections from the low sun glinting on wet rock. even the sky is dramatic.Nature knows how to put on a show but displays like this are few and far between. Great job to have been there waiting when she gave one of her best performances. Congrats on 8th.

It was a real pleasure browsing through the myriad and extremely varied entries to this competition. The ability to recognise and then isolate these moments of natural beauty within the frame or a viewfinder is not an easy one. The lucky few can do it without much thought but for many a degree of consideration needs to be given to balance the elements and form a composition that is easy to view. The many wonderful results that this competition has produced is testament to the strength of talent and abilities present in this community. I was asked to commend 39 images but could not keep it that low, I have commended almost 80 in the end. Thank you again for making the judging process so much fun.

This image just worked for me on many levels, firstly it works as a piece of art that I would happily frame and put on my wall. It has texture, wonderful tones, contrast and shows something that has been created gradually by natural forces over millennia. It is also an image that works when you study it closely with lots of details to be discovered, the scale we are looking at is something that requires some investigation too, once you see the waterfalls you realise this is vast and the open composition alludes that it is much bigger still. Isn't Iceland a wonderful place and isn't this a wonderful capture! Congrats on winning 'Mother Nature, The Artist'.

Such a simple but brilliantly effective image. The fragmented sheets of ice have formed an unusual but aesthetically pleasing pattern that only nature and her laws of entropy could have created. The darkness of the water and light blue and white of the ice creates fantastic contrast and results in an image that works well as an artwork. Congratulations on 3rd place!

I am a sucker for UP shots and this one is a cracker. As said in the brief, nature creates her art on autopilot, it's down to us to really 'see' her brilliance and then to capture it. Using a wide angle pointed straight up we get to see a perspective we often miss and this makes the image compelling. It looks like this may have had some selective colour work done on it with the trunks being converted to mono but this does not affect the impact of the image. Another really enjoyable image to view. Congrats on 4th place.

Such a lovely use of an ND filter to render a scene of calm and serenity. These tree branches protruding from the surface of a reservoir in Cornwall provide us with an image so simple that it's hard not to be impressed. The almost perfect reflections and the mirror-still surface set against a blank canvas of whites and greys is beguiling. Well done on 9th place.

I love this, image it is one of those well sought out and beautifully observed tiny little corners of nature that so many people simply never see. This is the kind of beauty that only photographers or artists take notice of. It is another perfect example of nature's dominance as an artist. Texture, light and shade, form and colour. Captured brilliantly for 7th place.

There were many image entries taken inside slot canyons in the US, and most were taken inside Antelope Canyon. Whilst they were all very nice images I felt that this one gave the most pleasing composition so have decided to award just this one in the top 10.

The desert is a place of change where natures art is in a state a rapid and constant flux. This image taken at Merzouga in Morocco, early in the morning makes use of the low sun to lengthen the shadows cast by the dunes. The rich and smooth tones and graduations in the sand are pure eye candy and definitely qualify as art. Congrats on achieving 6th place.

I really loved this image for the aerial perspective and the mix of textures at play that really demonstrates how mother nature creates her masterpieces. The waves that crash eternally against this rocky shore undercut and weaken the rocks through erosion that eventually causes collapse to create a ruckle of boulders. The constant wetness of the rock allows algae to form giving us these wonderful green hues. This image captures it all in a single frame, drama and power in the movement of the waves, the aeons of time that goes into the shaping and modifying of a shoreline. It meets the brief wonderfully and fully deserves it's 2nd place.