Frosty The Silver Surfer

In an effort to practice what I preach, here are a couple of photographs of a little Christmas tree decoration that My Lovely Assistant gave to her sister as a gift just before our Christmas party.  This little guy was in the process of getting lost in the shuffle along with lots of other photographs I've taken over the Christmas holiday when I remembered my words from a few updates ago.  I need to stop saving these photos and get them out there for people to (hopefully) see.  I was in the process of selecting photographs that I took on Saturday night for what I had hoped would appear in this update, but it was taking longer than anticipated.  Rather than just spend more time doing that, I decided to let this the surfin' snowman catch a wave.  This little guy caught my eye as I was taking some photographs of My Lovely Assistant's bûche de Noël.  I liked the way that the lights from the tree were reflecting on and through him.  I tried to take a few shots using my flash, but I quickly found that the flash was killing the effect created by the Christmas lights in the tree.   I was going to have to shoot these photographs by hand, in low light, which meant it was time to up the ISO.  For those of you who were paying attention while reading about the bûche de Noël, I mentioned that one of the photos was shot at ISO 1600 because I had forgotten to reset my camera after shooting something else.  Now you know what that something else was.  The second photograph allowed yours truly to make his second appearance inside of a Christmas bulb.  I still like the effect of the lights on Frosty, but I also like the light effects of the blue bulb that is in the top right hand corner of the photograph.  The backgrounds are blurred out in both photographs because I've always really liked a blurred background.  It helps to make what you want to stand out, really stand out.  The first photograph was shot at f/2.8, 1/40sec, ISO 1600 at 64mm.  The second photograph was taken at f/2.8, 1/25sec, ISO 1600 at 40mm.  I also cropped the second photograph to 8" x 8".  It's not a size that I usually would go with, but I felt it looked better as a square than the usual rectangle.  You don't have to take my word for it, feel free to decide for yourselves.  I've included the 8" x 12" version of the same photograph at the bottom of this page.  Feel free to let me know which you prefer.