Frozen Light – My photo of the year 2025

I took this picture on a bitterly cold January morning while crossing a bridge on the St. Croix River in Minnesota. The temperature was well below zero, the kind of cold that makes every breath visibile and every sound sharper.

The sun had just come over the hill, and those early beams lit up the icy river and the tire tracks crisscrossing the ice in every direction. I was told that every winter, once the ice cover is thick enough, people drive on the frozen river with snowmobiles.

I took this picture with the Pentax K-3 Mark III Monochrome paired with the lovely Pentax 40mm f/2.8 Limited pancake lens. The camera’s dedicated monochromatic sensor is a great match for this kind of scene (if you are careful with your highlights), and the 40mm f/2.8 lens is compact but extremely sharp. Together, they handled the shining ice and the deep shadows without washing anything out. The result came very close to how the scene actually looked to my eyes.

There was nothing dramatic happening: no movement, no activity, just a quiet and cold Midwestern morning. But the simplicity of the scene, combined with the light and the strange beauty of those marks on the icy river, made the scene stand out to me. Of all the images I took this year, this one felt the most “connected” to the specific moment in time I was living.

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Stay safe and keep shooting!

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