Buon Natale

I don't have a lot of requirements for Christmas. I don't need a lot of presents, and I have no attachment to the food once I get past Thanksgiving. All I need is a tree, and ornaments that mean something to me.

You see, I didn't grow up celebrating Christmas. I was 27 years old and 4 years married the first time I participated in this holiday; the first time I had a tree in my home. My husband and I made our sojourn to Hobby Lobby, buying a small tree and some coordinating ornaments. It was pretty, but it didn't have any meaning to me, regardless of my beliefs about the holiday.

The next year my husband excitedly pulled out the Christmas decorations, and discovered I had no enthusiasm. He was a bit disappointed but didn't let it phase him. He enjoyed setting everything up, adding lights as well. I helped, but only when prodded.

This went on for several years, until something magical happened. Patrick cajoled me into coming to help set up the tree one year. As we unwrapped the ornaments, I began to see the stories they held. One had been given to us by Patrick's parents. Another had been purchased on a trip. They were no longer just pretty baubles, they began to have meaning to me. For the first time, I had an excitement about decorating for Christmas. I had an emotional connection, found in the history of the ornaments. I now had a tradition.

That tradition has continued, through the years. Our son was born and we added "Baby's first year" ornaments. My husband completed a bicycle trip down the Oregon coast, and I made him an ornament to commemorate. We've picked up ornaments in places we've visited or they've been given to us as gifts from special people in our lives. Each one is a memory, something special to be revisited, as we set up the tree and admire them through the month of December. It is now a special family tradition the weekend after Thanksgiving, to turn on the Christmas music and set up the tree together. We carefully unwrap the ornaments, taking a walk down memory lane. My son loves it too.

So for me, all Christmas needs is a tree filled with ornaments that carry memories. The perfectly decorated and color coordinated trees can stay in the department stores, in my opinion. They are beautiful, I love to photograph them, but they hold no true meaning for me.

During our time in Italy, we've added quite a number of ornaments to our collection. In fact, we didn't bring any Christmas decorations with us, having the goal of gathering new ornaments on our travels. We now have a tree full of memories to take home with us. Here we are, by our tree of European memories, wishing you a wonderful, happy Christmas. Or, in Italian...

Buon Natale!

Today's 9 Muses Musing prompt is ORNAMENT. Today is my day to giveaway one of my favorite handmade glass ornaments from Murano. Please come by Mortal Muses and leave a comment or link in to enter the giveaway, I'd love to see it go to one of my faithful readers!

Paws-ing to Remember

"The stockings were hung by the chimney with care..."

I've never hung stockings by a chimney; I've never had one in my house. Not only that, but this year no Christmas stockings are hung because they are all in storage, back in the US. We decided to live without our Christmas decorations for a couple of years during our time in Italy. Maybe it was the picture chosen for today's 9 Muses Musing prompt of STOCKING, but I couldn't help think of those stockings in storage, and of the stocking that would be empty this year, for our sweet dog Tasha. She passed away this summer, at nearly 14 years old.

Since Brandon's birth, we've always hung four stockings with care - one each for Patrick, Brandon and me, plus one "paw" stocking for Tasha. I dug in my archives to find a picture of it, this was the best I could do from Christmas 2006. You can see the paw stocking there, balancing out the odd three for the humans in the family to an even four.

We would always put a couple of Christmas morning treats in there for Tasha - maybe pig's ears or a new toy. We had to be careful not to fill the stocking too early, or the smell of the treats hanging there would drive her crazy. Being the good dog she was though, she never tried to get at them. She would just sit there and stare at the stocking, like a kid stares at all of the presents under the tree. When Christmas morning arrived, Tasha would happily dig in to her treats as we opened our gifts. A Christmas tradition in our house.

So this year, the STOCKING prompt made me pause, remembering our sweet dog Tasha and Christmas stockings past. Give your furry family members a little extra hug for me, and maybe a treat on Christmas morning, in memory of Tasha.

Tomorrow's 9 Muses Musing prompt is ORNAMENT. Tomorrow is my day to muse again, and I have a fabulous giveaway for you, from one of my favorite places in all of Italy. I know it's Christmas Day tomorrow, but don't forget to stop by Mortal Muses to enter.


And by the way, I'm feeling much, much better today - back to normal. Thanks for all of the well wishes yesterday. Enjoy your Christmas Eve!

Story in Glass

These are my absolute, hands down, favorite ornaments in the world. Every time I go to Murano now, I pick one up. Come see more of the story behind them in my Mortal Muses triptych post today.

Have a great day!

Exploring with a Camera: Holiday Lights

I love this time of year. The nights are long, but they are full of beautiful, bright holiday lights! It makes this month, where you often go to work and come home in the dark, so much more enjoyable. This time, for Exploring with a Camera, we are going to look at different ways to capture these wonderful holiday lights.

City Lights


Here in Italy, every little town has their own holiday lights twinkling above streets and walkways. The central shopping zones are a festive place to visit and photograph.  Via Dante in Milan is one of the main thoroughfares, and the lights are beautiful. The lead-in photo above portrays the calm and quiet after the shops and restaurants are closed on a cold winter's night, with most people tucked into their warm houses. The photo below, of a street in Turin city center, is the opposite. I love the energy and movement conveyed in the photo, you can tell it's a bustling place, and the lights only add to the mood - you know it's a festive time of year.

Most towns will have a big Christmas tree in a central location, which can be fun to capture.Try getting back and capturing a scene, to show the tree in the context of location. The tree below in Milan's Piazza del Duomo would be just another big tree with white lights, but with the Duomo behind, it becomes more interesting and impressive.

Don't forget to capture the buildings and monuments around, with their pretty dressing for the season. This is Milan's castle, Castello Sforzesco, which even has a Disney-esque light show to music to show off it's millions of tiny lights.

Brush up on your night photography tips from the past Exploring with a Camera post and head out into your town to capture the lights of the season.

Light Bokeh


Holiday lights are a classic time to capture light bokeh! You get bokeh when you have: A shallow depth of field (from a wide open aperture or low f-number), a subject or focal distance that is close and distant point light sources.  This year I played around with capturing bokeh for this Murano glass ornament photo below. Let me tell you, this was harder than it looks!

A few tips, after my experience with capturing this photo:

1. You can't have the ambient light too bright, because it washes out the lights behind and you want that light bokeh! I turned off the room lights and moved a reading light, which was much dimmer, to point at the ornament to get enough light to illuminate it without washing out the lights on the tree behind.

2. While a wider open aperture will give bigger and rounder circles of light bokeh (you can see the flat sides on the bokeh in my photo), it also didn't allow for enough of the ornament to be in focus to be appealing. I had to experiment with different settings and found f/2.0 was about the best compromise to have most of the ornament in focus and nice light bokeh, for this photo.

3. You will probably need a tripod or your camera on a steady surface for this work. Even with a wide open aperture and bumping up the ISO somewhat (I didn't want to go above 800), the light was really low and the shutter speeds were much to long to hand hold without camera shake. I could have bumped up the ISO more and handheld, but I was at home and had the tripod available, so I figured why not use it.

4. Play around with the distance of your subject from the lights. Too far and the lights are just tiny dots, if you can even see them. Too close, and you don't get much of the "bokeh" effect. Also, varying the distance of your camera too the subject can change things. It takes some playing around, I discovered!

Here's another ornament photo with some light bokeh on the tree. You can see that not all of the lights are bokeh circles, because they are in the same focal plane as the ornament. They need to be out of the focal plane, to get the bokeh. This one was handheld. In fact, do you see me reflected in the ornament?

If you are using a point and shoot camera without manual control of aperture, try setting the camera to "Portrait" or "Macro" mode and turning the flash off. The camera will then choose the lowest f-number it can to blur the background, which is how you'll be able to get some light bokeh.

 Twinkle Lights

Another fun thing to try when you are capturing holiday lights is making them "twinkle" - you know, when the lights look like little stars?  This is done by the opposite aperture setting - closed down aperture or a high f-number. You will definitely need a tripod for this work, because as you close down the aperture you limit the amount of light that gets into the camera, and you have to compensate with longer shutter speeds than are possible to hand hold. 

Here is a picture of the tree in our home in Oregon, several years ago, using this technique. The aperture was set at f/22 with a shutter speed of 1.6 seconds. You can't hand hold that! My son was sitting really still for this photo, by the way. Click on the photo to see it larger, if you can't see the twinkle at this size.

Here's another, of some the gifts under the tree, with the same settings. I also adjusted the color cast on these two photos in Photoshop Elements, out of the camera they had the usual yellow tone of incandescent lights.

With a point and shoot, use the "landscape" setting, which should set the aperture to the highest possible f-number for the camera, and turn the flash off.

Reflections and Shadows

Where there is light, there are usually shadows too. As we set up our holiday decorations this year, I noticed that the candle we had near this little wooden tree was casting a very cool shadow. I played around with different angles, moving both the candle and the tree as well as the changing my composition with the camera. This one was my favorite, and I ran the Pioneer Woman "Seventies" Action on it to give a vintage feel.

In this photo, another older one from our home in Oregon, I liked the reflection of light on the blinds, it created interesting lines.

Trees and lights are often placed by windows, which give wonderful light reflections at night, and create a nice compositional effect. Do you see the "light echoes" in this photo, above the window and tree? Those were not there in reality and have been annoying to me at times as I worked on night photography. I recently learned these were coming from the filter on my lens. Remove the filter if you find you are getting these, and you will likely eliminate them. 

Are you ready to capture the holiday lights now? I am! I want to capture as many as I can, in my last holiday season in Italy. I hope you will return next Thursday, to Share Your View and link in with your holiday lights photos. You have a week to review your archive or take some new pictures to share with us all, plenty of time!

By the way, did you notice the new Exploring with a Camera blog button on the sidebar? You can get the code on the Exploring with a Camera page, if you want to put one on your blog too. 

Thank you for exploring with me!