Wildlife

With their big eyes and wide mouths, frogs always have plenty of character, making them popular with photographers. This shot is nicely composed, with the diagonal slant of the stick helping to draw your eye across the frame. All three frogs are looking in the same direction, which makes you, too, look at the insect above them. The fact that the two on the right are in identical positions helps the composition too. They're nice and sharp, with glistening highlights on their eyes and skin, and the photographer hasn't overblown the colours.

Often with wildlife you have little control over the colours you have to work with. The creatures are their natural colours, and usually the background is earth tones or the greens and browns of plants. That makes the blue light bathing this image all the more surprising, and so the butterfly stands out all the more clearly. Depth of field has been managed carefully, so only the butterfly and the part of the leaf it's standing on are sharp, adding to the dreamy feel.

The judges loved this shot because the photographer didn't feel the need to show the whole terrapin in order to capture the essence of it. It's sitting in running water, its mottled shell echoing the pebbles beneath it. The light, as well as the crop, makes the image work. While the colours of the terrapin and its environment are similar, the way the water creates starkly contrasting ripples of light and shade on the pebbles whereas the terrapin's shell shows more softly graduated light helps to separate the two.

Seen close up, snakes make naturally dynamic subjects as their coils, and the neat lines of their scales, swirl around the frame, moving your eye around. While the shape of the snake does help lead you to the focal point of the image - the head - the photographer here has used light and depth of field to help, too, blurring out the coils that are further away from the camera, so the python's head is the brightest, sharpest area.

Who doesn't love a puffin? This shot capture the cheeky expression on the nearest one's face brilliantly, and the way it's so sharply frozen almost gives the impression that it's hovering. Puffins actually flap a great deal – their wings aren't the longest, nor are their bodies the most aerodynamic - making the sharpness of this shot all the more impressive. Given the blurred foreground, and the blur on the bird behind, you can tell the photographer thought hard about the precise depth of field needed.

You don't have to travel far to take a great wildlife picture: most of us can find a snail or beetle near our homes. The trick is to make the viewer look again at what they'd usually think of as a commonplace creature. By getting really close to the subject, the photographer brings us into the snail's world, so what from a distance would be simply green moss and lichen becomes an alien world, full of unfamiliar shapes and textures. The brown colour of the snail, and strong, smooth lines of the plant it's sheltering under, create a clear focal point.

Rhinos are among the most iconic creatures on the planet; you know them as soon as you see them. Even in silhouette they're instantly recognisable. What's particularly nice about this image is that the outlines of the rhinos are crisp, but there's just enough detail in the background to give you a real sense of place. The flat-canopied trees, the clouds of dust: they tell you that this is Africa in all its sunkissed splendour, and these rhinos are definitely wild.

How long would you have to wait to see a trio of sable antelopes so perfectly spaced and posed? This shot is a great example of capturing the moment. We're used to seeing images of a hot, dry Africa, and Etosha National Park can indeed be very dry - but this is the wet season and the antelopes are making the most of the vegetation. It's also given the photographer a wonderfully-textured sky, which adds interest to the upper part of the frame without distracting from the animals.