Another Christmas has come and is about to go. Another year of beautiful decorations all over. Whether it be in malls, in hotels, in restaurants, in houses…Looks so nice, and so festive. Some of the stuff is very simple, but so elegant at the same time. It’s always fun taking some time out and just staring. Then I pull out the camera and instantly get a headache because I cannot translate what I see to pictures. But then again, I’m not patient or an overachiever, so I cheat. What would I guess be the right approach to taking decorations? Let’s see what the situation is and then decide what we would need to do. There’s usually low light, because in order to see the light decorations, it has to be dark. This is a big deciding factor in what you want to be doing. We need to be allowing more light in. If we opened up the aperture, that’s affecting your depth of field and also the lights will not be as small. The higher the aperture number, the more light streak you will get. So, what should you do if you want to keep your aperture high and allow lots of light? Tripod. You can slow the shutter and by putting it on the tripod, you won’t have shake and you get maximum light.

Now how is it that I cheated? I had pretty low aperture(around f3.5) and increased the ISO to around 3200. I did have a slow shutter(around 1/50), but I rested my hands on a couch to prevent shake. You must be wondering, what did you do to get rid of the grain because the higher the ISO, the more grain is introduced in the picture. In Lightroom, I adjusted the noise reduction. Bumped up the brightness at the same time. I hope you are not as lazy as me and do the right thing. Maybe next time I’ll pull out the tripod. Merry Christmas!

Inspiration

This Christmas I was reminded of something that I already knew. I always knew I should be grateful for what I have, but this year was different. I met someone who lost her husband, I met others who have taken jobs and ended up being more stressed than before, I met people who are spending their Christmas away from loved ones, I know others who will be celebrating their first Christmas without their dad. I’ve met people who are going through so much, yet still pushing on. Still wanting to live. Still wanting to smile, still cherishing the life they have. I always knew in my head to be thankful for what I have, but was reminded in my heart to not only be thankful, but to keep fighting to live. To keep fighting for what I have and fight to make a difference in others lives. It’s easy to take the short cut, it’s easy for me to be angry when things don’t go my way. It’s easy to like in photography, do the minimum and expect a great picture. Maybe it’s time to put things into perspective. To really try and put forth effort into things that are important to me. It’s like a phrase I’ve heard from a dear friend, “lean into life”. What’s the worse that can happen? We may cry for a few days, but then we are back up and running.

“Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
‘Til He appear’d and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.” – Placide Cappeau (O Holy Night)