"Pay attention to the world." -- Susan Sontag
 

Winter Scenes: Fragile Phenomena (Set 1 of 2)

From Angel’s Crest by Leslie Schwartz:

“He saw how the snow had come and changed the place, had made it new again…. He saw how pristine and stunning it was and he slipped, for a moment, into the past. He saw the glory that had been his life, the wide-open beauty of it, the hardships, the simplicity even when, back then, it had seemed so complicated and difficult. The beauty of the world made him feel, for a brief moment, like a man who had been delivered of all that had ever hurt or wounded him. The land, capped by snow and the splendor of winter, stretched out before him, miraculous and unparalleled in its breadth and beauty. He saw himself floating above it all … flying farther and farther away while the snowy world below disappeared from sight.”

From Walden and Other Writings by Henry David Thoreau:

“Many of the phenomena of winter are suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy.”



Christmas Scenes: Three Pups, Two Santas, and a Fish

I took the six photographs below as an experiment after reading this article about photographing Christmas scenes, especially the sections on dealing with low light: How to Use Christmas Bokeh for Creative Holiday Photographs. I took more than six photographs, of course, and I’m looking through the others trying to learn what works well under holiday lighting conditions (!!) and what doesn’t. My camera has a “Night View” mode that I have used before but wanted to understand better, so some of the photos were taken with that setting — an automatic setting that increases ISO to enable a higher shutter speeds but also introduces noise and reduces my control over the results.

For some of the photos, I switched to using a tripod so I could try long-exposure shutter speeds and a lower ISO to eliminate much of the noise; for those taken with the “Night View” setting, I used Lightroom and the Nik Collection tools to reduce it and threw in some background softening to pretend the noise wasn’t there. I’m like a bull in a China shop with a tripod, mostly from lack of practice but also because my tripod isn’t quite right for the camera and isn’t strong enough to safely hold it with a lens attached (and it doesn’t work very well without the lens). I should invest in a new one — or maybe one of the Santas will stick one under the tree — but I’m not convinced I’d use it enough, though I’ll probably change my mind about that after a while.

Thanks for reading and taking a look; more lateron! 


Three pups …

Two Santas …

One fish …