A few weeks ago I walked through Audley End while it had it’s special Christmas lights display on. It was there that I found these fairy lights in a jar in the garden:
ISO 200 f/2.2 4.15mm 1/17 sec
Charming really. For the square edit I used Hipstamatic:
ISO 200 f/2.2 4.15mm 1/17 sec
It has the Jane Lens filter applied.
The Instagram version is here:
Added to January Squares Day 22.
Cheers!
Lights At Night is not the topic of this week’s photo challenge, it’s actually “It’s Not This Time of Year Without…” but to me holiday lights at night mean that the Christmas season has arrived.  It’s also perfect for a photo challenge because shooting at night is a challenge to me.  Part of the problem is practice, in that I almost never do.
Something I decided to try on this shoot was to use the Kelvin temperature feature for my white balance. Â I was shooting just as the sun had set and was looking to capture those deep blues in the sky. Â Here is an article that explains Kelvin with a chart to give you an idea of what temperature you would need to use under various temperatures. Â This is one of the photos I captured:
ISO 800 50mm f/11 1/25
It’s got the blue sky and the lights, but I’m not too sold on the rest of it. Â So, I decided to edit a bit more and here is another version that I came up with:
ISO 800 50mm f/11 1/25
What I have done is created a black and white version and layered it over the original and then masked back in some of the color. Â Two other things I did was remove the neon reflection in the pub window and the red tail lights that are in the first version. Â Those are just two details that really bugged me.
What do you think of this second version? Â Feel free to leave a comment below. Â Do you have a favorite setting to use on your camera at night? I’d love to hear about it in the comments, and if you’ve blogged on that topic, feel free to leave a link.
Cheers!
I was having some fun with bokeh again. Â A few days ago I blogged about it with some hints on how to achieve the effect, you can check that out here if you like. Â This is another image that I took:
ISO 400 50mm 0ev f/1.8 1/30
What I liked about this image was the texture of the ornament competing with the texture of the lights.
Happy Boxing Day!
Cheers!
Since festive is the theme this week at Where’s my backpack? I decided to give the whole bokeh thing a try.  Here is one of my photographs that I took last night:
ISO 1000 50mm 0ev f/1.8 1/80
For those of you who are not familiar with the term bokeh, in this photo it is the dots of light that the tree lights and tinsel have become in this image.  In order to get this photo, I first read this article that is on the Digital Photography School website.  If you ever have a basic question about photography, I think the DPS website is a good place to start.  What I liked about the bokeh article is that it includes specific examples of bokeh with each of those photos linked to the flickr image.  Flickr (the link there is specifically for bokeh) is a good place to look at images because the camera settings are often included in information, which gives you an idea of where to start when making your images.
For my photo above, I used a tripod. Â By setting my f-stop to 1.8 it was easy to have just the bird in focus, thus creating the bokeh effect with the lights an tinsel. Â This was a fun image to make, and I will be working on some more while we have our tree up.
Cheers!
It was a bit rainy here over the weekend. Â I enjoy catching photos of raindrops, so I went looking for this photo, a raindrop on our Christmas lights.
ISO 200 50mm 3 exposures f/9 1/25
I used my tripod because even though the bush wasn’t going anywhere it was a bit breezy and I knew I was going to try a bracketed exposure to make an HDR image. Â For this image the exposures were (-1.67, -2.67, -.67) Â I set the exposure dark because it was hazy out, so there was a lot of light.
I then used Photomatix to make my HDR image. I picked a version that I thought brought out some of the rich color tones that were there. Â I put the image back into Aperture for some final tweaking. Â I cropped and sharpened the image a bit. Â I also made the top right corner a bit darker.
I’d like your opinion, would you buy a card or print of an image like this? or does the combination of rain and Christmas not appeal to you at all? Â Feel free to leave a comment below.
Cheers!
To liven up your Friday:
ISO 100 50mm 0ev f/10 4s
I shot this inside in the dark, spooky!
Anyway, I draped Christmas lights around the pumpkin and then moved them as I was taking the photo.
Scary, but not as scary as what I saw at the mall later that day.
shot with my 3G iPhone
Let the shopping season begin I guess. Â I’m not ready, but I guess that is too bad.
Cheers!
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