A classic winter scene -- outdoor skaters on a frozen pond (or, in this case, a frozen bog) captured the top prize in December's 'Tis the Season themed contest. Our judge, professional photographer Melissa Robotti, was fulsome in her praise for this shot:

Had some coffee and vanilla tea with photo judge Melissa Robotti last night as she chose the Top 10 finalists in the December 'Tis the Season contest, and reviewed your votes as she made her choices. I'm in the process of putting that entry together now and will post it as soon as I'm done.

It was interesting to hear her thought process as she made her choices. She clearly was looking for good composition as well as creativity. It was important to her that a photo reflected a lot of thought on the part of the photographer and was more than just a snapshot. You'll hear more from her when I post the winning photos.

Meanwhile...

Honestly, I don't want to stress out all of you! There's just one photo not showing up in the Voting Machine because that photog has his Flickr setting set to not allow the Flickr API to grab his photo. I've sent him an email via his Flickr account; hopefully he'll get it and respond soon. So hold tight ...

This month's judge, Melissa Robotti, finished reviewing the 82 contest entries and narrowed the choices to the Top 25. We'll load them into the Voting Machine and open voting later today. Meanwhile, here are Melissa's thoughts on the photos she judged:

The initial judging for the December "'Tis the Season" contest will be done this afternoon. The judge is Melissa Robotti, a former Boston.com producer who now is a professional photographer. She specializes in boudoir photography; that's where women pay her to take sexy photos of them that they give to their boyfriends, fiances, husbands. So before you look at her website, make sure there are no young'uns around.

The other major part of Melissa's business is wedding photography. She also takes portraits, landscapes, etc. -- a wide variety of photos. She's successful enough at the wedding and boudoir business that she's about to pursue it full-time.

By the way, I added three more photos to the December gallery that were uploaded to Flickr before Dec. 31, but weren't found by Flickr's search until this past week. They will be part of Melissa's review.

Once Melissa cuts the entries down (she'll trim to 25 since we have just 82 entries), I'll track down Jared Novack to write the Voting Machine code for me and I'll post it as soon as I can.

Good stuff, people ... all the eligible photos are here, so look them over in preparation for voting next week. Use the "Full-screen" link to get the best effect.

Meanwhile, don't forget to enter the January contest, and to vote for a February theme. Questions? Email raw@boston.com.

OK, RAW Dawgs, I just got in from clearing my driveway with my little girlie snowblower, and I'm ready to start building the gallery of the December contest entries. The deadline is midnight tonight, but we won't start judging until Jan. 5 or 6 to give Flickr time to find new accounts. It's frustrating how long it's taking Flickr to find new accounts -- at least two weeks! Thankfully, we're getting our own photo upload tool sometime in the first quarter of next year, so perhaps we won't have to rely on Flickr's API for our contests any more. Stay tuned ... and stay warm.