"It makes me want to sit in front of a fireplace!" was how Globe assistant chief photographer John Blanding summed up his feelings about the First Place winner in our January contest, which had the theme of "Cold."

OK, voting for the January contest has ended ... Globe photographer John Blanding will look over the Final 50 once again, see how you voted, and then choose the Top 10 winners. I'll post the winners Tuesday morning.

John Blanding, the Globe's assistant chief photographer who judged this month's contest, loved the range and variety of photos you submitted for the January theme of "Cold". He was impressed by the level of detail of some pictures, liked some that included a human or animal element, and marveled at the black-and-whites: "The contrast and strong tones really came across well," he said.

Look for the main gallery to be finished today, and over the weekend, look for a Final 50 gallery as well as several other entries on various items -- exhibits, etc.

We'll post the Voting Machine Monday morning and open voting for 5 days ... so when the Final 50 gallery is posted, look over the photos carefully so you're ready to make the best choices ... yours and two others, right?

The Flash gallery became too big for this blog software to handle, so I had to split it in two. This gallery contains some photos that were in the Part I gallery, along with more recent pictures I have posted. It's now complete. I'll post a gallery of the Final 50 photos over the weekend, then we'll open voting Monday morning.

This gallery was getting so large that I had to split it in two. Some of the photos that were in this gallery are now in Gallery Part Deux (in the entry above this one), along with new photos -- with more to come. This gallery now contains just the first 125 photos I posted. I won't add any more photos to this gallery, just to Part Deux.

I also moved the gallery into the extended entry field to get its weight off the RAW homepage, so from the homepage, click through to see it.

There are 249 entries sitting in Flickr for the January "Cold" contest -- the most ever, although I haven't de-duped multiple photos from the same person, if there are any. Our very first contest, "At the beach" last August, drew 238 entries, so let's see if we can't beat that mark.

A reminder: The deadline is midnight tomorrow (Saturday, Jan. 31). We'll give Flickr a few days to find new accounts, then I'll ask photographer John Blanding to winnow the field to the best 50 for you to vote on.

I'll start posting the entries this afternoon and keep adding.

Meanwhile, Essdras Suarez of the Globe staff critiqued a portfolio yesterday; we'll post that early next week. And I have a tipsheet from Mark Wilson about taking photos in the cold -- how apt! I'll also get that posted ASAP.

Now that's cold! You chose Cold as the theme for the January contest, and we're opening entries now -- no need to wait until Jan. 1.

How can you illustrate cold?