Photographer Pål Hermansen earned a finalist spot in Close Up Photographer of the Year's 'Death & Decay' challenge with his image Mallard in Ice, showing a dead duck frozen into the ice of a small lake in Norway.
Hermansen's photo feels almost poetic, as the duck is frozen beneath the ice, while the trapped bubbles suggest movement that once was. The duck sits at that boundary of life and death – its beak above the surface, but its body submerged beneath the lake's frozen skin.
