Our inaugural Winter Guide photo contest has been a success. We had great response to our call for photos of winter in the Rochester area. Many of you dug through your collections and sent us snowdrifts and icicles, things buried in snow and things made of snow. (And one guy who looked like he might have gotten frostbite. We hope he's OK.)

Picking the winners was --- as it has to be with art --- a subjective decision. But a small panel of judges agreed on these five photos as the top of the heap, and thankfully it didn't come to blows. And most of them even grudgingly agreed, thanks to your artistic efforts, that winter can be quite pretty. They liked these for their composition, quality, and sense of place and season; we hope you like them, too.

Congratulations to the winners and thank you to everyone who opened their photo albums to us.

Frist place:Eric Anthony Sucar; Shawn Orlowski

Runners up:Gerry Szymanski; Sue Green "Into the Light"; Hoss Firooznia "Taughannock Falls."