Snow and ice

I’ve chosen this as my winning image, from a very strong field of contenders. I think it conjures up brilliantly the pure excitement of snow, and the way in which childhood is enlivened by its arrival each year. The colour of the image has a cross-processed look (the technique of processing negative or transparency film in the chemicals normally used for the other) that adds to that nostalgic feel of the shot. I think the fact that the boy is not easily recognised also makes it easier to imagine that it’s you there, enjoying the snow as a child once again. I love the way that the snow is pin-sharp, but the boy less so – it’s an effect that works well.

This shot of a splatted snowball on glass is all about imagining what happened before. The snowball fight in the street, someone ducking, and the window taking the full force. If you look closely you can see a thread of wool in the middle of the snow – helping us imagine the gloved hand that packed the snow together then launched it. Placing the splat right in the middle of the frame works really well, and the flash that has been used to light it lifts it neatly out of the darker background.

Panning a moving subject is not easy, but here it has been done well, with the speed of the sledge successfully conveyed and the joy of the ride writ large over the faces of the mother and daughter. The colour treatment of the image does not quite work for me. It feels too saturated, and this is most noticeable in the skin tones. I also suspect an over-lightening of the shadows, or use of HDR software, that has given the shot a slightly strange contrast and feels a little forced. That said, this is a great moment of excitement caught on film.

Colin’s well thought-out composition of a French chalet has been shot directly into a bright sun, with the two facades of the building he is shooting in full shade. To counter that he has used five different exposures, but the effect to my eyes looks a little unbelievable. I’m all for using varied exposures to deal with high contrast scenes, and thus represent them in a way that better matches what our highly skilled and adaptable eyes can manage, but it needs to be done carefully. The walls of the building look too bright here, given the darkness of the shadows cast by the trees just in front of the building.

This is one of my favourite images of this contest. I love the contrast between the harsh, simplistic structure of the bridge, and the intricacy and variety of the frozen leaves and branches. The muted colours convey the deadening effects of the cold, and the lack of any vista beyond the end of the footbridge is a nice analogy for the difficulty often experienced in seeing beyond winter whilst in its grip. The composition is fabulous, in particular the crop at the bottom of the image, giving as it does just enough room below the bottom of the main railings.

My runner-up for this contest, and a brilliant scene that portrays the collective experience of sledging on a popular slope. Some waiting to go at the top, some careering down the hill, and yet more doing the long haul back to the top. There are friends tussling, parents looking on as their children play, and a couple admiring the view. The image is a wonderful balance between the individual stories and the shared space, and all presented within a well executed and exposed landscape scene. It reminds me strongly of the photography of Walter Niedermayr.

I’d love to have known more about this image when considering it. I’m guessing that a sheet of ice has been lifted off the water and held in front of the subject. I think it’s great. Not just the idea, but the execution too. The side lighting, the bright colours behind the subject, and the tight, square crop all work very well. The closed eyes give a sense of a drowned figure, trapped.

Beautifully composed, simple, and strongly evoking the experience of driving in treacherous snowy conditions. The blurring and haziness within the image, whether from the windscreen, the driving snow, or something else, conveys well the experience of squinting through the windscreen to make out the road ahead.

I don’t think I’ve seen a better evocation of the chaos of a heavy snowstorm, and trying to battle home on your bicycle before the snow lays too deep and you end up in a heap. The blur of the snow, the angle of the shot that shows us so much of the sky, and the harsh lighting from the streetlamps combine to set us right in the heart of the scene and give us a real taste of what it was like to be there.

This is a really fun shot, the snow-covered beast hurtling directly at the photographer, who presumably is about to get knocked off their feet. My main comment on the shot is that it lacks balance. All the action is happening in the top half of the frame, and cropping a significant chunk from the bottom of the image would add to the impact. It also lacks sharpness, but then in some situations you can be forgiven the odd technical imprecision!

This is a nice idea, contrasting the crisp rocks and snow against the running water, which is shot with a 29 second exposure. The tight but well-chosen panoramic crop gives it an abstracted feel. The blue tone in the image is too harsh for my liking. There will naturally be blue in the ice and the water, but here I feel it has been emphasised too much, and has given the image an unreal feel. The shot has also been over-sharpened, which is most evident in the white outline of the rocks in the bottom right corner. When applying sharpening, if you see light or dark outlines starting to appear around objects in the image, back it off – it shouldn’t be obvious that sharpening has been used on an image.

This is a really interesting arrangement. It almost looks like two halves of separate images. The tree seems to have died on one side, or maybe the wind has just blown it that way. On its more abundant side we have a row of more trees in the distance, which fits perfectly. On it’s bare side we have a dead tree stump, which also fits perfectly!

The snowman looks to the skies. Does he know that his demise is now imminent, and is reflecting on the harshness of his birth, or is he dreaming of the future in blissful (for him) but heart-wrenching (for us) ignorance? Or maybe it’s just an amusing shot of a snowman made strangely human by the addition of a pair of glasses. A slight shame the snow is over-exposed, but a wonderfully observed shot which works despite the tilted horizon.

This really captures the mixture of fun and terror that I certainly remember from sledging on snow as a kid. The dog running effortlessly alongside, all four feet off the ground and attentively watching the boy, is hilarious and brilliant. What a fabulous shot for the family album. My only suggestion would be that it needs a crop on the bottom of the image, to balance the composition and have the subjects occupying the centre of the scene. Either that, or a crop from the edges to produce a square frame might also work well.

This is a neat idea, using the contrast of the white snow and black walls to show off the haphazard layout of the fields. What has proven difficult is finding the right framing and crop for the image. The bottom left corner has a slightly awkward interaction with the wall, and stretching along the top of the image there is a distracting wall that only just appears, and a badly placed hut in the middle. The edges of any image need to be treated with respect, as objects there, especially if they interact with the edge or are not given enough room to breath, will draw the eye disproportionately towards them.

This is a lovely shot, and my favourite of the bird images that were submitted to this contest. I felt a little mean not giving this shot a commendation, but I kept being drawn to the distracting leaves in the top of the left hand side of the image. It’s essential before an image is signed off that the photographer takes a look all around its edges, and in fact across the whole image, to ensure there is nothing that is taking the attention away from the main subject.

These berries are a beautiful subject to shoot, and more so for having the frost on them. There are two things I think need improving here. The composition almost works, but feels a little weighted towards the top left corner of the frame. The image could be cropped a little from the bottom and right to remedy this. I’d also like to see the plane of focus more deliberately placed on one or two of the more prominent berries. As it is the stalk is in focus, but the berries aren’t. Getting the plane of focus in the right place when the subject is so close can be tricky, as you will be moving yourself a little if handheld, so it’s a good idea to take a few versions when you’ve found your shot.