With Christmas and New Year on our doorstep we are taking a 5 week break from our bi-weekly sessions. The next 2024 Winter Sessions will start on January 16. I know the holidays are prime time for taking pictures so for that I have opened up this “Year End Challenge”. The only challenge for this category is to take appealing holiday / year end images. It can be anything, from Christmas landscapes, to portraits with a Christmas theme, to holiday activities such as skating or skiing, to Santa Claus parades, or Christmas ornament still life images.
In any case I wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and have fun with your camera.
trying boca
ISO 200 110cm f5.7 1/125
Great example Della. Elegant sculpture.
Playing with Bokeh. 35 mm Macro Lens at 50 cm to the subject with the Christmas lights at 4 meter from the camera. The image is cropped quite a bit in the center. Notice the perfectly round bokeh balls. f/2.8, 1/250 sec, ISO 1600
Nice image for all of us to enjoy Henri.
Modern lens design keeps that round shape throughout the aperture range. It wasn’t always that way.
As always it was tempting to modify the shot through removal, replacement or other adjustments to make the shot better at least in the eyes of the photographer.
However, I promised none were made. Went back a day later and there was a significant modification done au natural as the warmth continues.
Shot on portrait setting on iPhone SE Thus f 1.8, 1/4000.
Love the snow bunny!
This was chosen best of class by a group of home schooled children age 8-10 who are regular attendees to this general area for their physical education.
They also wanted to made adjustments but I told them Was bound by the “shoot ’em as you see’m” photographers oath. So again none were made save cropping to avoid giving free promotion to SuperSaver toilet rentals.
F 1.8, s.s. 1/1412.
Very cute and authentic.
I went on the Christmas walk with the CALL walking group on Tuesday. We started at the Giuffre Family Library on 14 St SW and walked around Mount Royal. This house was felt to be the best decorated.
Taken with my Pixel phone in Night Sight mode.
Cropped in Photo Gallery.
This child could not resist touching one of the dozens of displays at Confederation Golf Course on 14 St. NW.
ISO 800, 40 mm, f/2.8, 1/80 sec
One thing I like about my Ricoh, besides the fact it fits in my pants pocket and I can take a photo with one hand, is it will allow me to take out-of-focus shots, one of my favourite things (my Canon will not let me push the shutter button, so maddening). I took this all bokeh photo of Sunnyside and downtown from Crescent Road.
ISO 800, 40 mm, f/2.8, 0.5 seconds. (After I downloaded it, I saw I had accidentally changed the setting to Raw, but I have no idea what to do with that!)
In focus shot of the same scene. There’s a big Christmas tree in Sunnyside, so I figure it qualifies for the theme! I was touring the decorated houses on Crescent Road.
ISO 800, 40 mm, f/2.8, 0.3 seconds
Nicely framed with the backlit trees, which must be from all the Christmas lights on Crescent Road!
Right! I was across the street from the spectacular house with tons of white lights.
I noticed the extreme long shadows on our afternoon walk on December 22. I had fun placing one leg over the pole shadow while hiding my head behind the sign shadow. Taken with my smartphone. I thought is would be a fun memory of the 2023 winter solstice.
Bucket head!
Shot this photo with my ‘ancient’ Olympus E-500 which I keep in the vehicle for a ‘just-in-case reason (and my 8 year old grandson uses when we go shooting together). Takes good enough photos, main drawback is the small (in today’s world) 8 megapixel sensor. It has dual card slots for Xd and CompactFlash but one does need to carry multiple cards given they don’t store a heck of a lot of photos. f/5.3, 1/80, 40 mm. and adjusted in LightRoom for exposure, highlights and shadows. I almost always just lightly touch up sharpness.
I have a Lensbaby Composer Pro Sweet 50 lens bought several years ago. It represents a badly spent five hundred bucks. Perhaps in better hands it can do the wondrous things Lensbaby website claims. Not so much in mine. On the other hand, perhaps I have not given it a chance since this photo is the first shot with it in perhaps four years. It is a 50 mm all manual tilt/pivot lens, f/2.5-f/22. The photo shot at f/2.5, 1/13 sec. and 160 ISO
…forgot to mention, as you no doubt can tell it is a shot of a (my) lit Christmas tree. Depending on the tilt angle of the focus point of the lens it creates various distortions around the focused part
My attempt at bokeh using a similar setup described by Henri (~ 4m from lights and statuette ~0.5 m from lens)
f/5.3, 1 sec, iso100 (no flash)
Really amazing and beautiful!
A Canada jay hoping for a xmas present…
f/5.8, 1/100, iso160
Really cute shot! I’m pretty sure that’s a Clark’s nutcracker, a bird I’d never heard of until I looked for it online. I looked it up because I thought the Canada jay had a much shorter beak.
Happy New Year! We went out for a drive Christmas eve to the surrounding countryside and this display was at a local garden center. This is with my cell phone. I only cropped it and used the contrast and shadows, to darken the background from the cell phone edit program. I have had cataract surgery on the 19th so the camera and computers are not my friends right now.
What an interesting display. Is that an ice sculpture at the end of the light tunnel?. I like what you have done with contrast and shadows to darken the background and make the light display pop.
zoo lights
some texture out walking the dog
New Year’s Day sunrise in Glenmore Park. I stopped down the camera to get the sunburst effect, but was surprised to see the circular lens flare and rainbow-coloured ring. Sony RX-10, 65mm, f/16, 1/80 sec. Denoised in Topaz AI, and colours warmed up slightly in Apple Photos.