For our fall 2007 photo contest, we asked our readers to submit photographs playing off the words "beginning," "middle," and "end." Here we present our favorites from among the nearly 100 submissions we received.

A luminescent circle gleams over an ocean of subtle fabric waves. Little squares of small purple beads sit like boats on a pale-blue sea. Surprising fragments of red and white texture enter from the side. A cloaked green figure seems to walk along the shore to a blue-misted house in the distance. Behind in the sky, cloud forms repeat the patterns on the surface of the water. Little gold amulets shine in the light. One can feel the coolness in the air and the breeze rising up from the water.

On a small, dark stage, Venus slowly materializes, walking silently toward us in a diaphanous robe, holding a chalice and a sheath of wheat, her eyes distant. Jupiter, looking like Dionysus, sits on an invisible chair holding a jester's toy, laughing at something he's just heard from sly Mercury, who slowly floats by. Neptune the mystic crouches, bare-headed, waiting, looking beyond us.

A huge foam cornucopia, curling in a massive yellowish shape, fills up the entire front window of the Leger Gallery in its current exhibit. Instead of the smooth perfect curve of a mathematical spiral, we have an unevenly textured solidified liquid used in a completely new way to describe the flow of thought and time and nature. With an industrial material normally used to insulate houses, Terry Rathje has created a buoyant example of the lively and inventive presentation inside.