Blue Poinsettias

This is not as sharp as I would like, but it's still a fun and pretty picture.

I should maybe have darkened this one a bit. Hmm... Anyway, I did change the horizon so that I could get a nicer crop, cropped it heavily, and tried to sharpen it a little bit. It's hard to see, but the blue leaves also have sparkles on them! :) (Yes, the snow is very fake. This was an indoor display.)

Merry Christmas!

Holiday Lights

Mickey, Minny, Snoopy, and all the rest are wishing you a very happy holiday!

Christmas: Bright Snowman

Another from an older set. Cropped and sharpened a bit to compensate for being hand held.

Christmas: Ornament 2

Another cell phone picture. Again, I'm quite pleased with the crispness and DOF on this one. I loved how shiny and sparkly this ornament was!

Christmas Angel

An older picture from a set that convinced me hand held just doesn't work at night. :) Cropped and slightly sharpened.

Christmas: Ornament 1

I love Christmas tree ornaments.

Macro lens.

Christmas: Poinsettia

Ho ho ho! Time to get in the spirit of the season and enjoy some holiday themed pictures!

I was really quite impressed with how well this came out - because it's a cell phone picture! This is a very pretty Poinsettia. I contemplated stealing it.

Christmas boat

1) Yeah, yeah, holidays are over, blah blah. Too bad, you get another picture anyway! :-)
2) My boyfriend roundly chastised me for leaving the tripod in the vehicle. I apologize in advance for that fact, because it did have a negative impact on the picture, although I believe I took this one propped on some kind of pillar or post.

The moment I saw this boat, I loved it! They did such a great job with the lights. What I was trying to capture here: The boat's lights as well as the reflection. I don't believe the reflection would ever be perfect, as this is on the ocean, so the water is never perfectly still. And it takes so very little movement for light to "smear". As much as I like the lights though, my favourite part of this image is actually the boat just in front of it, to the right in the image. It's reflection on the water is quite crisp. I did slightly crop this picture, to cut out a distracting boat to one side, but that was the extent of post-processing.

So, how to get this picture better? A tripod is a given, but because it was on moving water, a long exposure isn't the solution for a sharp picture. I would still need a faster shutter speed. A high ISO and large aperture would be in order, I think. Sadly, I was too tired to try playing with the settings that evening, I just wanted to enjoy the view and the nice smells, so I let the camera do it's thing and I will simply try to learn from what it did.


Auto white balance, 0 exposure bias, ISO 400, aperture 3.2 and 0.8 second exposure length.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Ornament photo

One of the examples of interesting photos you could take during the holidays, were pictures of ornaments. Well, my attempts at photographing my glass drop ornaments, or shiny reflective balls were complete failures. I might have fared better if I had moved furniture around and gotten a tripod up to the tree, but someone was using that furniture to wrap presents on! So instead, I got a cute shot of this guy.

Some people love Santas. For others, it's angels. For me, snowmen!

Happy a safe and happy Christmas Eve everyone!

Reuse

There's a tree in city hall decorated entirely in reused items. Here are a few of the ideas that appeared on the tree.

This one appears to be made from Christmas cards! You could either use ones you received in previous years, or ones that people have leftover and don't want to use. With a little creativity, you could probably do something very similar with old magazines, possibly using some stiffer paper as a backing.

This fun ornament is a painted lightbulb. What a great way to reuse those burned out bulbs!

This guy was some sort of aluminium can in his first life, and now he's an angel! (I cut off the wings a bit in the picture, I wasn't at a great angle.) Make sure to rinse the can out well before doing this.

This picture was taken at the same place as the smiling bear. It's a huge lights display, with various different tableauxs.

This picture was slightly cropped to make it a little more balanced. Otherwise, it's untouched. I didn't have a tripod, and I was worried that the pictures would come out quite blurry because there was nothing to rest the camera on, but there were so many lights that the ambient light was enough to keep the shutter speed down to a reasonable point. I particularly liked the cleanness of the lights in this one, the simple white and blue.

Christmas photo tips

Christmas only comes once a year, so you'll want to make sure you get the best pictures you can - there are no do-overs!

Digital Photography School has posted 16 Digital Photography Tips for Christmas (I love tip #3 and will quote it at the bottom of this post.) Here are some of the great links they've provided as well:

• Taking pictures of Christmas lights from Strobist
• Here's a nice, season-independent set of hints for taking group shots
• Some great tips for taking candid shots

Best Family Photography also has a lot of great tips about taking Christmas phots - and they don't only talk about people.

The New York Institute of Photography has some good tips - some at a more advanced level. Holiday Photos

Overall, these are my favourite tips:

1. be prepared. Charge your batteries, have extras. Scout out the area ahead of time if you can to get a sense of the light you are working with and the layout - where is there clutter, where is there clear.
2. catch candids. These are almost always better than posed photos. Use multi-burst or continuous shot if you can.
3. out of the ordinary. You don't need to only take pictures while people are opening presents. Catch people chatting, wrapping presents, setting the table, or making presents.

This is Tip #3 from the Digital Photography School link provided first in this post.

3. Set up a DIY ‘Photo Booth’

While you probably can’t afford to hire a photo booth for your party you can set up a ‘portrait zone’ of your own where you’ll take photos of your guest.

I did this a few years ago and set up a little place where I asked everyone who came to sit for me so that I could take a nice shot of them.

I photographed everyone as they came in and then left the camera (a point and shoot) set up on a tripod and set to a short self timer time so people could photograph themselves during the rest of the party.

I set it up in a well lit position with a red velvet curtain looking background with a few Christmasy decorations around the edges. I left a few Santa hats and tinsel for people to decorate themselves with.

The shots were great – people went back to it throughout the party and the photos got crazier and crazier as time went on. It was the hit of the party.

Let's Christmas!

Let Christmas begin!

City Hall has this beautiful garland stretching all around the main floor. This is a detail picture of it. They really do a great job of dressing the place up for the holidays.

Challenge Smile

Part of the challenge for me is to think of different ways to approach the subject.

In this case, I don't have many people in my life who like to have their pictures taken, so instead of stalking a stranger, I looked for a smile elsewhere! The bear in the middle of this scene is actually animated, and when his mouth is open, he looks like he's smiling. I cropped this picture to clear out the clutter and the noise.