Art teachers Mr. Jeff Frank and Mr. Dave Boyles decided the snowfall on December 17 would be a great opportunity for their students to demonstrate their art skills through photography and decided to hold a “Winter Wonderland” photo contest for their art students. The top three winners of this contest received an Amazon gift card.

“Photography is a good way to use a lot of your artistic skills to quickly create a work of art,” Mr. Frank said. “The snowstorm created the perfect setting and our students did an amazing job capturing the scene.”

The art teachers received hundreds of amazing photographs, but had to choose the top three champions of the photo contest. Coming in third place was Josh Maida, second place Olivia Barbarti, and the first place winner was Kristel Mendoza.

Mr. Frank wanted to find some way to get his students engaged with the recent snowfall, and thought a photo contest would be the perfect way to do so.

“I came up with the idea after our first snow storm of the year on December 1st.  I got some nice pictures that afternoon and decided that I would have the students take pictures of the snow the next day, but it had already started melting. I had missed my chance to get the students outside and get some nice pictures” Frank said.

Luckily that was not the last snow of December. Mr. Frank was overjoyed when the next snow storm hit, so that he could assign his art students to take some pictures of the fresh snow.

“I hoped that capturing a landscape with an interesting composition and dramatic contrast would be fun,” Frank said. “I was also thinking that it might be a good idea to get our students out of their rooms/houses for a few minutes and get some fresh air.”

Sophomore and winner of the contest, Kristel Mendoza, was very excited to get outside and capture a few photos of the snow. She has a passion for photography, and could not wait to test out her skills

“The contest brought an opportunity to experiment how I would take a picture with various angles of the camera,” Mendoza said.

The popularity of the contest already has Frank thinking of the next opportunity for something similar.

“We hope to have a ‘Colors of Spring’ photo challenge next,” he said.