No sky - Rural landscapes

This is exactly the sort of image I was looking for when I created this contest. There were a good number of excellent entries, and hopefully some people who have always assumed that a landscape photo must contain sky, can look over the best entries and appreciate how great an image can be with land filling the frame, and no sky. I am sure this image would be far less impactful if sky had been included. Instead, we can fully focus on beautifully lit rolling fields, and delicate white blossoms bursting out all over. You have kept the colours gentle to keep the harmony of the scene, and there is a beautiful softnesss across the whole scene with no over-sharpening and no strong contrasts of light. A beautiful image, perfectly seasonal, congratulations on your winning image.

Green can be a difficult colour to get right in an image - there is often only a fine line between a dull greyish colour and a lurid florescent green. In my opinion you have it spot on here, which is a good thing bearing in mind your image is only green! The slightly different shades have been very well handled, as your image contains good depth and detail. Love the composition too with the placement of the building on the upper right third, and the pattern of terraces sweeping around the scene. Great work, well done.

This image was in my top ten from the start. It is a beautiful image, caught at just the right time to capture the sunlight as it filters through the mist, creating these wonderful shafts of light and shadows of the trees. Lovely colouring across the image - blending across the frame. If you came upon this scene by chance, you were very lucky, but I rather suspect it took a lot of planning and patience. Whichever, you have been rewarded with a fabulous image. Well done.

This is a great image, and another example of why I love to see landscape images with no sky - it somehow concentrates all the attention on the land, with its various patterns, shapes, colours and features, without the distraction or dominance of the sky. I like the composition, with the line of the bottom of the valley running on a diagonal across the frame. I can feel the chill in the air as I look at this image, with the spring still some time away. The lack of strongly saturated and contrasting colours is one of the reasons for the success of the shot, in my view. A beautiful capture of the English countryside in all its understated beauty. Well done on your top ten placing.

I have seen images shot at this location on several occasions, but this is a great version of the scene. The central composition of the little islet works really well, and the muted colour palette add to the wintery impression of the shot. The contrast between highlights and shadows has been well handled, as nothing is too harsh, so the gentleness of the image is retained. Being picky, the wide digital frame and white watermark are a slight distraction from the subject, but not enough to keep the image out of my top ten. Well done.

This image is so full of impact, bold and striking. It narrowly missed the winning spot in this contest. The lighting is fabulous, as it helps highlight the brilliant green diagonal strip of grass and trees, but also shows the gentle undulations and plough markings in the rich, dark soil. I am not sure whether the image was taken from a drone, balloon or from some other nearby vantage point, but you spotted a beauty here, and took full advantage to capture this stunning image. Well done on your second placing.

What really appeals to me in this image is how you have captured layers of depth, from the lovely heather covered foreground, the bumpy moorland in the mid distance, and the farmed fields in the far distance. Another great example of a landscape where I feel the addition of a sky would be detrimental to the shot. I love the simple colour palette of greens and purples, which all blend beautifully. I wish I was there! Well done on your top three finish.

I like this image more each time I look at it. There is a wonderful amount of detail in this image, it is great to just let the eye wander around and take everything in, after initially being drawn to the bridge. I really like how we can see the lines of footprints in the near distance, causing us to question who (or what) has been there earlier. You have handled the exposure of the shot very well, as the brightness of the snow is spot on, with no highlights blown out, yet still retaining a crisp whiteness. Well done on your top ten placing.

A lovely image showing a view high above a misty valley in Yorkshire. What attracts me to this image is its gentle softness, and the different layers of the scene - the immediate foreground vegetation, the near farm buildings, the mist in the valley, and the fields way beyond in the far distance. Colouring has been kept natural with nothing over-saturated. Being picky, I may have preferred to see the image without its digital frame, but I still think this is a great image, perfect choice for this contest, and well deserving of its top ten placing.

This image may not turn out to be a crowd-pleaser, but I think it is great and deserves to be placed. Composition is good, with the line of trees snaking diagonally across the frame. The square crop and black & white conversion works well here too. You have tagged the image with "ballooning" so I presume it was shot from a hot air balloon, I imagine from a great height, and I like the abstraction this gives to the landscape. Love it - well done on your top ten placing.