Very beautiful light and reflection, well captured. happy holidays

Very impressive!!!!

SO beautiful!!! That is a rather elegant structure over there.

Beautifully captured well done Mark wishing you and yours a most joyful festive season..

The fine tracery of the twigs, dark against the bleak winter sky shows a lot of skill with the exposure control. A beautiful scene well taken.

Mark, this is an extra special treat as you blessed us with one of your lovely images to start the day. When ever thoughts of Chicago in the winter enter my mind the images are always cold and miserable. Through your photos you show another side of it and of what a true winter wonderland it truly is. It's hard to imagine a more lovely and picture perfect scene than this one.

Beautiful shot Mark! I love the way you captured the reflection of the trees in the ice/water and the misty quality of the capture is really unique. As usual, beautiful shot - hope you have a wonderful holiday!

Marvelous picture. Fantastic!!!!

Oh, this is brilliant, Mark! The colours are subtle and stunning, and the softness and detail just make me want to stroke it (I guess I'm a tactile kind of person, eh?) It's perfect and absolutely beautiful!

Mark, this is a jawdropper. MY goodness what a beautiful shot this is. ALL about it is wonderful and I so love the tones and reflections and the softness in it. It is such a gentle and peaceful scenery. One of your best. Man, I love it. IASPOY!

As I sit here sweltering in 32C heat at 5 pm, this shot reminds me of the onset of winter in Labrador, with the ice creeping from the shore to the centre of the ponds/lakes and the crunch of the frost underfoot. Believe it or not, I loved it, and still miss it. Wonderful shot, Mark, and thanks for the memories.

Super shot my friend it would make a cool xmas card!!!

A wonderful shot!!!

This has such a dreamy, ethereal look. And in some strange way, the wooden structure gives it some warmth. It's a beautiful shot and I'm not usually a big fan of winter scenes (MUCH too cold, lol)--- an eyecatching beauty for sure!!

Wish I could articulate everything I see and feel in this tantalizingly soft, yet wonderfully composed image. You might say I am skating on thin ice here:) No, truthfully, the way there are no hard edges...thin, translucent ice softly blending into transparent isinglass, then into still unfrozen water...the trees into sky... The atmosphere of early morning before the hustle and bustle of the new day. The pale reflections. Everything works! Marvelous:)

This is simply gorgeous, my dear. Everything looks so soft, so gentle ... even the colors are barely there. I hardly have words for this. (Actually, when you sent it over last night, I opened it and swore (in great admiration) and Bill thought something must be wrong.) I believe I said, "Ohhhh, Holy F***!" There really wasn't much more to say about it. Jaw on floor, speechless beauty.

A picture-perfect capture of winter in all its cool, quiet beauty and gentle stillness. Love the mauve tones that cast such a lovely mood. Glad to hear you are re-connected. CC

How beautiful. It seems so soft, enhancing the winter quiet.

Gorgeous capture! The light and the reflections are superb! The tones and colours here are absolutely fitting! Makes for such a calming effect!

serenity ina picture, a beautiful scene

Practically surreal in this stunning winter image, Mark, replete with wonderful contrast and burnished ice effects in the foreground. You are really getting expert at these Chicago milieu concepts.

Your shortest day is our longest day. Yours looks very beautiful in spite of it being winter and ours is so hot and windy, such contrasts in this world of ours. This is a wonderful capture with its amazing light that gives it a beautiful glow. I like how the stump draws my gaze to the little landing on the shoreline as if it is telling me to go that way.

Omigosh Mark - this is off the scale beautiful! You are amazing with composition! Excellent shot! (Will reply to the sitemail shortly!)

Gorgeous work.

I love a gorgeous picture taken with a "rockpod"...the most stable of camera stabilizing tools! The color in this is amazing, and it gives more than a hint or two of the sorts of colors that would have occurred during the lunar eclipse that night: one we missed because of clouds...oh well, we missed the prior solstice eclipse as well, since we weren't exactly around in the 1600s. I love those bare trees and the poetic mood of this. There's a particular beauty to the bleakness of winter and you've captured that so perfectly. The bare trees, the still water with a thin skin of ice, the structure strangely resembling the skeleton of a boat...all of it is fantastic. The overall composition is beautiful and I absolutely love the stillness. This is a gorgeous shot. Superb!

And again the lylac hue you choose looks wonderful. I also like the expressed front plane and the graphics of the branches in the background. Quietude and fragility.

this has it all .. that beautiful soft sky, the naked trees .. omg .. did you mark this for nudity??? I love trees traced against the sky like this in winter. I love seeing the shapes, the bones of the trees. And reflections in the water. This is about as perfect as you can get.

very very beautiful !

what a mood this wonderful shot has, superbe!

gorgeous winter image, love the mood and tones...just super