Snow is nothing new to wintry weather but Monza, Italy-based photographer Niccol Bonfadini captures a unique sight of the season in which trees are completely overwhelmed by snow and ice in subzero temperatures. The cloud-like shells in each image mask the trees in a frosty armor with nothing but snowy grounds surrounding them as far as the eye can see. The setting alone is spectacular, but the photographer's keen eye and patience offers a naturally surreal view of a frozen landscape.
Traveling to the Finnish Lapland in the frigid cold of winter, Bonfadini has managed to snap shots of these frozen trees as though they are alien creatures emerging from the ground. With temperatures ranging from -40C to -15C, Bonfadini insists that the bitter cold was actually bearable, given the beautiful view. The photographer patiently camped out on the scene and awoke early enough to set up his camera for some truly spectacular shots of the landscape just before sunrise. One of his images, titled Sentinels of the Arctic, even wound up catching the eye of NASA as the Astronomy Picture of the Day.
