Warren photographer Butch Lombardi has won YankeeMagazine.com’s Winter Photo Contest.

Mr. Lombardi’s winning photo, “Female Cardinal in a Snowstorm,” is published on page six in the magazine’s January/February 2013 issue, which hit newsstands on Christmas. In making the selection, the judges were struck by the contrast between the starkness of the background and the richness and focus of the cardinal’s colors.

Mr. Lombardi’s work has graced both Yankee Magazine and the Warren Times-Gazette’s pages many times. He took the photo last year while caring for his 93-year-old mother, who was confined to her home after a fall. On the day of the only significant snowstorm of the winter, he set up his camera with telephoto lens behind a foam-board blind in a bathroom window.

“It was snowing pretty heavily and there were three pairs of cardinals in the tree at one time,” he told Yankee. “The shot was taken from about 20 feet away. One reader commented that it would have been a better picture if it had been of the male. I disagree. The female has many subtle colors that make her a better subject in many ways. The snow all around her face clinched it for me.”

The image offers a lesson for the aspiring photographer, he said: “Don’t put your camera away when the weather gets bad. Even though it’s uncomfortable and the lighting is poor, shooting in bad weather can result in those kinds of shots that most people don’t get, like this one.”

Mr. Lombardi was YankeeMagazine.com’s featured photographer in August 2011. See his slide show of Rhode Island’s East Bay on YankeeMagazine.com and for more information and photos, see his own website at www.eastBayImages.com.

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