Carol Stream woman wins December photo contest

The photo, Angela Cichosz says, was a diamond in the rough that needed a little polishing.

The Carol Stream woman captured the wintry image in February 2009 after visiting the West Branch Forest Preserve near Bartlett with her Canon PowerShot SX110IS camera to take a photo of the dreamy, serene landscape.

Instead, she ended up with an uninspiring picture of snow on the ground. Disappointed, she filed her photos on her computer and considered the shoot a bust.

She didn't even look at the pictures again until about a month ago when she pulled up the file in her philosophy class at Elmhurst College. The 20-year-old student started playing around in a photo-editing program, Picnik, and began cleaning up the picture.

She turned it into a panoramic view and converted it to black and white. She added falling snow to the wintry scene and added a vignette effect to create a calm mood.

“I thought it was interesting because the snow on the ground was already there,” she said. “The snow falling was added. It looks like a normal thing. It's very interesting to change something like that.”

DuPage Photo Director Scott Sanders was impressed by the result. “She took a mundane picture and turned it into an artsy scene,” he said.

For her efforts as the winner of our December Photo Finish contest, Cichosz will receive a $50 gift certificate from PJ's Camera in Pickwick Plaza, 662 Roosevelt Road, Glen Ellyn.

Cichosz said she bought her first upscale camera in 2007 to take photos of her puppy. At the time, she had a camera with a built-in focus. She said she wasn't happy with her photos of her dog, so she invested in a Canon Rebel XT and has taken it everywhere since.

This is the second time this year Cichosz has won our contest — she also captured first place in July. She said she plans to spend both gift certificates on a macro lens to shoot pictures of dragonflies.

She said she has seen many Flickr photos of the insect and wants to try to capture a similar image.