Last month's self assignment was to create an image that captures the feeling of the holidays.  We want to congratulate both the winners and all those who participated.  This was by far the toughest contest to judge so far as you guys sent in so many great photos. Thanks to our sponsor, FujiFilm, the winner receives 20 rolls of the Fuji professional film of their choice. The runners-up receive 10 rolls of the Fuji professional film of their choice.  Winners are notified by email.

Winner: Christmas Sparkle, Vicki McLead Vicki tells us "I wanted to set up a still life to use for my Holiday greeting cards. I used the star filter to add a little sparkle to the Christmas balls." Vicki used her Canon Rebel 2000 and Sigma 70-300 F4-5.6 DL Macro Super lens to capture the image onto FujiColor ISO 100 print film. A print of the image was then scanned with a Canon D66OU Flatbed scanner. No digital manipulation was done to the scan.

Nutcracker, Steve Horne "We were getting out the Christmas decorations and our 10 yr old son stacked the nutcrackers all in a row sorted from tallest to smallest. I saw the possibility for an interesting isolation study. A Nikon SB-24 flash was used off-camera directly in front of the nutcrackers. I set up at an angle to the right and used maximum aperture (about f/5.0) to minimize the depth of field". To capture the image Steve used a Nikon N70 with a Nikon 70-300 ED lens set at around 150mm. Film was Fuji Provia 100F. The image was scanned with an HP PhotoSmart scanner, and no additional manipulation was done to the scanned image.

Round Church, Rich Long exposures and reciprocity failure can combine to create interesting color shifts in images captured at night as seen in this holiday image of a church and Christmas tree captured by Rich (last name not provided). Rich tells us that "The image is of a Round Church near my office in Richmond, Vermont. I waited for a snow storm to capture this image of the church at night." To get the image Rich used his Nikon N90s and Nikon 35-70 AF f/2.8 set at 70mm and Kodak Ektachrome 200 film. The resulting image was scanned using a Nikon LS2000 scanner. No post scan manipulation was needed.

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