Poinsettia in front of the tree.

What would Christmas be without taking a family portrait?  Who knows how many more Christmas' we will have with all the kids home together?  What better setting than in front of the fireplace with the Christmas stockings all hung and the Christmas tree nearby?  This shot was taken with my Nikon D750 and a 50 mm f1.8 lens attached with an SB900 speed light mounted on camera and bounced off the ceiling.  I thought about going through the trouble of getting studio strobes out and figuring out where to place them but this gave reasonable results and was much simpler.

2014 Crystal Ornament

While setting up for the shot and waiting for everyone to get ready (the picture was taken just before heading off to 7:30 PM mass at St Christopher's), I decided to try and photograph other Christmas related items nearby.  I first moved Amy's large poinsettia plant into the family room and set it up in front of the tree so that I could get a picture of the plant with defocused Christmas lights in the background. The result was pretty nice.
I then moved to the tree and looked around for some interesting ornaments to take pictures of.

2013 Crystal Ornament

Katie's boyfriend, JC, had presented a gift from his mother for the second year in a row.  These are very lovely snowflake crystal ornaments by Swarovski in an ongoing series.  Here are pictures of the 2013 version and this year's 2014 version.  One thing I learned here is that if you plan to take shots of glass or crystal up close make sure you polish off any fingerprints first!  Oh well, live and learn and learning is why I'm doing this blog in the first place.

Pooh and friends enjoy the snow.

Pooh and Piglet off on a grand adventure.

With the Swarovski's photographed, I then turned my attention to a couple of Winnie the Pooh ornaments that belong to Katie (she has a special relationship with Pooh).  I decided to try some experiments with an item I received for Christmas last year.  I used my CamRanger setup for automatic focus stacking shots (I mentioned focus stacking in an earlier blog).  This device connects to the camera via USB and has a small computer in it and a wifi connection for an iPad or iPhone (I suppose Android would work too).  This allows one to take control of the camera remotely and the device has several built in capabilities, one of which is focus stacking.  It doesn't actually process the pictures into a single image, you still need to do that in Photoshop. What it does do for you, however, is make minute adjustments to the focus on the camera between successive shots.  You can configure whether it makes small, medium or large changes (don't know quite what they each are, yet) and how many shots to take before stopping.  With my 105 mm macro lens attached I took a few series of a these two ornaments.  I particularly like the sledding shot because the location of a blue Christmas light off to the right gives the scene an almost moonlit look.
Well that's enough for this week.  I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas with family and friends and I'll be back in the new year with whatever I can come up with for photo ideas.

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Jon Potter.  We see him once a year at this gathering.

Every year since we've been married Amy and I have hosted a Christmas party for our closest friends and their families.  Some have been attending our annual gathering from the very beginning and others are more recent acquaintances but they all have one thing in common.  They are great people and Amy and I are truly blessed to have them in our lives.

Kristy and Jack.  Jack smiling for the picture.

Jane smiles pretty for the camera.

Tarik and Alexa playing.

As the years progressed from that very first Christmas Party 29 years ago we all, hosts and guests alike, began our own families and in order to accommodate all we made it a tradition that our annual party would be a family party where children were welcome.  At some point during the evening Amy would sit at the piano and the guests would all join in for carols.  Now the honor of leading the crowd on the piano falls to our oldest, Katie, and its primarily the young adult friends of our kids that sing the carols.  At least the tradition continues.

Sara enjoying some holiday cheer.

As for young kids at the party, we still get a few as some of our newer friends and co-workers have started their families.

Landon admires the ornaments on the tree.

For the first time ever I asked the guests to gather around for a group shot and I want to thank them all for their ready cooperation.  Some knew that my motivation was a photo for this week's blog and I'm happy to share it with you all here.  I've also included a second shot below taken by my good friend, Rich, so that I could be in the shot as well.  This was quite a task for a Canon owning fellow photography enthusiast given that he had to use my Nikon for the shot.  Missing from the shot because they arrived only moments after it was taken are the Oleans and the Bells.  Dan O. wanted to do it again so he could be in it but once was enough.

Katie and her cousin Julia.

Kris listens intently.

After the guests left and Amy and I were catching our breath, I mentioned that if we can count each of those that attended our party amongst our friends then we are indeed blessed.  For as Clarence  writes to George at the end of that holiday favorite, "Remember, no man is a failure who has friends". Merry Christmas to all our wonderful friends!

For more pictures of the party check out this flickr album.

Doug and his friends enjoy the festivities.

Amy and Kristina singing carols.

Replacement group shot where I swap places with Rich.

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While looking for my next indoor photo project (I really need to get back outside!) I found this video on how to photograph a steaming cup of coffee.  I thought this would be a great idea with Christmas themed props to complete the scene.  Above is the results of my efforts.  This particular project turned out to be even more challenging than photographing whiskey bottles.

Setup showing diffuser and back light holder.

Getting the light behind the coffee to be at just the right angle to illuminate the steam and not cause too much glare in the lens or cause too much of a shadow to be cast in front of the mug turned out to be quite difficult.  I needed a way to suspend a light at just the right height and not having a boom arm stand of any kind I had to use my wood working skills to improvise.

Showing the reflector in on the scene.

I used a powerful mag light as my steam back light and a spot light through a (newly) homemade diffuser bouncing off a reflector as my main lighting.  I used my standard 50 mm lens at f/9.0 for 1/20 second exposure and an ISO of 1000.  The excellent performance of my new camera at relatively high ISO settings makes it possible to use continuous lighting like this and still get excellent results.  The noise at ISO 1000 with my previous cameras would have had me think twice about this setup.

Replaced the coffee with hot cocoa and whipped cream. 

The coffee I used in the mug was some old instant we had around the house and I made it relatively strong to get a dark coffee in the mug.  While everything was setup I figured I would dump out the coffee and replace it with a huge serving of hot chocolate with whip cream and cinnamon.  Those of you who aren't coffee drinkers will likely find this version of the shot more appealing.  I did not try and light any steam off this mug because I figured the whipped cream would hold it down and besides, that was what made the shoot so difficult in the first place.  After snapping a couple shots of the mug full of hot cocoa I grabbed the subjects of the shoot and returned to my study for a well deserved snack ;-)

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Pattern 1

Setup for taking the spirograph pictures

In photography you will often hear the terms "drawing with light" or "light painting" and this usually means one of two things.  The first thing some people think of when they hear the phrase "light painting" is the technique where you shoot a dark (usually night) scene and illuminate sections of the scene with a flashlight by sweeping the beam across the object.  This can give some very powerful results and I hope to cover that technique in a future blog.  For this blog I'm demonstrating what would be better described as drawing with light but is also referred to as painting with light, so you can see how the use of these terms can be confusing.

Pattern 2

Drawing with light involves long exposures in the dark with a beam of light (I used a small maglight) pointed at the camera and moving to produce a shape.  All my shots this week were done by hanging the light from the ceiling with a length of string and allowing it to swing like a pendulum over the camera.  The camera was setup directly below the flashlight and set for between 10 and 30 second exposures.  I found through experimentation that the longer exposures worked better because it allowed the light to sweep for a longer time and made a more complete figure.

Pattern 3

After taking several shots I brought the images into photoshop to make sure the black was deep black and the light trail was fully exposed.  I added a gradient adjustment layer with a blending style of multiply to apply the rainbow color to the otherwise white pattern.  Colorizing the pattern in this manner makes for a much more interesting image than the simple white pattern drawn by the swinging flashlight.

Pattern 4

Picking a favorite was not as easy as I thought it would be and is likely a matter of personal taste.  Consider this week's top pick a rather random selection from the others posted here.  I like them all and found the exercise in making them fun and relaxing (lying on the floor looking up at a swinging spot of light can be mesmerizing).  Feel free to leave a comment telling me which is your favorite.
For some really interesting pictures of light patterns check out this recent posting.

Pattern 5

Pattern 6

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