Frozen lake

A frozen lake I passed while cycling in Ukraine this spring. No

space to carry a tripod, hence the shallow DOF.

Was this handheld - it's not very sharp. Try using a tripod and small aperture (e.g. f22) Foreground interest is always good, but in this case there are a little too many twigs and stuff in the way and, because they're sharp whilst the picture isn't, they distract too much. Also, what is that black line down the bottom? Was this scanned from a print?

It was indeed handheld. The only tripod I can carry while cycletouring is a small tabletripod. If I can park my bike to something solid, I can put the tabletripod on my bike. That was not possible on this spot.

It was scanned from the slide with a relatively cheap slidescanner.