Merry Photo Christmas!

Another year has come and almost gone, and here it is, Christmas again. You may have guessed already that I love Christmas, especially the colors and lights that brighten up this dark time of year.

Lately, I've been experimenting a lot more with my camera, especially with shutter speeds and ISO settings. I thought it might be fun to share a few of my camera experiments here on the blog, as well as a couple seasonal images, too.

I'm intrigued by what my camera does when I set a long exposure and move the camera while I press the shutter. The other day I made several photos using this technique. Here are my favorites—I call them my Christmas fantasies.

Pretty cool, huh? I love the long strings of color! For those of you who are photography nerds, the first photo was taken with a .5-second shutter speed and an f9 aperture, and the second had a .8-second shutter speed and an aperture of f16. The ISO setting for both photos was 3200.

This time of year, I also love experimenting with bokeh, a Japanese term meaning blur or haze. Bokeh is a fairly common background feature of any photo with a short depth of field, but around the holidays, it's really fun to play with intentional bokeh and Christmas lights.  Here is one of my favorites, which I took last Christmas.

Here is my favorite bokeh photo from this year, a combination of clarity and blur.

Experimentation is fun, but sometimes I just want to capture some of the magic and memories that surround this wonderful holiday. This little wooden man has hung on the Christmas tree every year since I was five years old. He was a gift from Santa in my stocking that Christmas and went on the tree immediately. He brings back many sweet memories of Christmases past...

So here is my wish for you this Christmas: may your holiday be filled with color, light and happy memories!