Snow and ice

There's a lovely balance to this image, and the photographer has done an excellent job at finding a frame for the boat. It's a stronger image because the boat doesn't intersect with any of the shorelines around the edge of the lake. It stays within its frame. The only slight change that I would have made to improve upon an already great image, is to leave a little more breathing room around the right-hand edge of the frame where the boat nearly leaves the frame. It's usually a good idea to give some breathing room to your main subject and it will help the composition feel a little less busy. It appears as though the photographer had their lens set to its widest point on the zoom, so just a step backwards instead would have helped to give it that extra space on the right.

Shooting action sports isn't just about getting a shot of an athlete doing something, it's about being aware of the absolute peak moment of action within what it is the athlete is doing. The photographer timed this shot perfectly to get the central point of the skier's turn and display good form with parallel skis as well. When I'm looking at sports images, I'm always looking for photographic skills matched with an understanding of the sport. This photographer has displayed both of those things perfectly. Visually, the image balances nicely with the large chunk of blue ice on the left delivering just enough visual weight to counteract the contrast of the dark, yet colourful skier against the white snow. You're drawn to the subject immediately, but not left unaware of the beautiful surroundings.

This is a wonderful, cold looking photo from Iceland, and the photographer has used a neutral density filter to allow a much longer exposure time to be achieved. This longer exposure has rendered the water silky smooth which removes the often distracting patterns and highlights that can appear on water. Now the viewer's eye is free from those distractions and that leaves them resting solidly on our subject, the chunks of ice. The longer exposure also blurred the cloud movement a little bit as well, and this has helped to create a stronger separation between the sharply rendered ice, and the smooth clouds behind it. Contrast is always king in photos, and it doesn't have to be tonal contrast. In this case the contrast between the smooth water, or smooth sky, with the sharp detail of the ice is what makes it so strong.

This kind of abstract slow shutter image is so hard to pull off, but the photographer has got it just right with this 1/2 second exposure. Just enough details are maintained that I can clearly imagine the scene, and the cool tones help with the wintery feeling. The important thing about shots like this is to move past the point at which it looks like a photographic error, and this is achieved nicely here. If you try blurred images with a shutter speed that's too fast, it just looks like you were trying to get a sharp photo, but failed. With this shot it was clearly a decision to create the abstract look, and it works brilliantly.

I've tried photos of snowflakes myself with this very same Canon lens, so I know just how hard it is to get a stunning result like this. I'm unsure if the photographer used a focus stacking technique or not, but either way, the result is the perfect depth of field to reveal all the detail in the snowflake, but not too much that the background distracts too much. The contrast and any additional vignetting/burning done in post processing is also handled extremely well, pushing the eye across the frame towards the snowflake. This is a very technical shot that's been handled perfectly.

Not all shots work well in black and white, but this one is a perfect example of how it should be done. There was likely very little colour in this scene naturally, at least none that added to the story that was being told. The choice to go with B&W simplifies the images and it's stronger for that reason. Also the contrast and shadows created by the predominantly backlit scene are a great compliment to a B&W conversion. I love the emptiness of this shot and the dreamlike feeling I get from it for that reason. It's also a great demonstration of the fact that the "rule of thirds" is made to be broken. The bench is central in the image, but because it's balanced vertically by the bright light, the whole scene composes very well. Great job!

Shooting into the sun at sunset can be a tough thing to pull off in a landscape shot because you can end up with the sun drawing too much attention away from the actual landscape. The photographer has chosen this composition well, though. The backlit ice on the trees has taken on the glowing colour of the sun and helped to visually balance the lower half of the image with the brightness of the sun. Whilst I think the saturation slider could have been used a bit more tentatively in the processing stage, it's a beautifully composed shot.

This is an image that just jumps out at you from the screen! What an incredible location and experience. The choice to shoot this shot with a longer focal length of over 200mm was perfect for this. What makes this so dramatic is the inclusion of the small boat full of people because it gives us a sense of scale. Then the compression effect of using the long focal length has enhanced that, making the iceberg, maybe it's even an island, appear much closer to the small boat than it actually is. If I had one small suggestion, it would be to have taken the shot a few seconds earlier so that the people didn't cross through the line of the bottom of the ice island just to give its impressive shape a bit more breathing room in the composition. Nonetheless, this is a stunning shot!

Kudos to this photographer for being out in the cold snow storm that's clearly taking place! Being present with a camera in the moments when all others are indoors, is often when you can find some unique magic! The thing I like about this shot is the moment with the one reindeer looking up towards the photographer. That makes a huge difference to this photo, it wound't be as strong without that. The 1/25 second shutter speed is a bit slow to get a sharp image, though. The general rule of thumb without a tripod is that you should try not to go below a shutter speed of 1/focal length. In this case the focal length was 1/58 second, so the "rule" tells us that a better starting point for a shutter speed would be in the area of 1/50 or 1/60. This would prevent some of the camera shake, but actually since we have moving subjects in the image as well, it would be better to go even faster and get at least 1/200 to freeze the motion of the walking animals. Shooting in shutter priority and selecting that setting would have yielded a much sharper version of this shot.

The photographer here has made a couple of excellent choices: Firstly they have chosen an instantly interesting and dynamic subject that can't help but catch the eye. Secondly they have understood that backlighting this snow spray would provide the best results for an image light this. It's very easy to blow out the highlights when subjects like this (smoke, steam etc.) are lit from the front. When backlit, the varied density of steam creates nice contrasts. This image could have been further improved, though, by tilting the camera upwards to crop out the glove on the floor, and also thereby including all of the spray. The foreground of this image has nothing to add to the scene at all, so the base of the composition would have been better placed just beneath the subject's knees.

I loved the light in this shot and the long shadows tell me the photographer was out photographing at just the right time of day to catch nice contrast and textures in the snow. There's a lot of interesting things in the shot when you consider the three most prominent trees, and also the edge of the barn. Whilst it's great to have lots of interest in an image, ultimately you want a viewer's eyes to come to rest on a subject, and I don't get that with this shot. I'm left a little confused as to exactly what the photographer wanted me to look at. The hint of an interesting barn just makes me wish I could see more of it. The exposure is perfect, but it would be a stronger shot if there was a more clearly defined subject to the shot.

For this photo the photographer has chosen an interesting subject, and then added depth to the image by photographing it from an angle that delivers some nice out of focus foreground objects. With ice, you can often get specular highlights from reflected light. These are the bright spots of light on the ice. Many lenses will render these with a coloured fringe around them. It's called chromatic aberration and occurs at points of extreme contrast on an image, particularly when a lens is at a wide aperture. In this photo, we can clearly see purple fringing, and also a little green fringing. It's a distraction that can be easily removed in post-processing with the click of a button, though. Lightroom and all similar programs have an option to remove this lens anomaly automatically, so it's a good idea to use it when you see these colour fringes in your images.

A panoramic photo is a great way to show a wide landscape scene like we see here. It really underlines the vastness of a landscape. This photo would be improved if the person on the right-hand side was not in the shot, though. The bright colour of their jacket is so instantly visible that the viewer's eye gets drawn to it immediately, and away from the landscape which is the intended subject. The sky above the person is also the brightest part of the image so these things combine to keep the viewer's eye glued to the right of the frame, when in fact all the beauty is in the centre and the left side.