Festival of Lights

Christmas time is sometimes referred to as the Festival Of Lights.  Understandably so, whether is be Hanukka candles of or Christmas tree decorations, there is a lot of light associated with the season.  So, with all of that light at your disposition, why not have a little bit of fun with them.  These photographs were taken using a little but of trickery, but nothing really new.  It's a little technique that I had buried in the back of my head, but was reminded of after having seen it in practice in a magazine that was given to me as a Christmas gift by one of My Lovely Assistants sisters (merci Alexandra).  All you need is a Christmas tree full of lights, and a tripod.  I say 'all you need', but it was surprising how difficult it was for me to find a light display that I felt comfortable using.  There were lots of lit trees on the property of people's homes, but I didn't feel those people would appreciate having a camera pointed at their living room windows as many of those trees were on front porches and next to large bay windows.  So, I wheeled around town a little bit until I found this collection of lights in Saint-Lambert.  After that, I played around with different exposure times, finding one that I liked and then I'd go about taking the pictures.  After deciding on a time, I'd take the photograph and during the final five seconds, I'd begin to rotate my camera on the tripod, creating the streaks of light that you see.  It's good to make sure that there isn't a light source to the left of your camera as it will bleed into your shot, but otherwise, because it is dark outside, the objects that are not well lit, such as the building or trees in the background, don't appear to move at all.  It's a fun little trick to try.  You can see the results in the first two photographs.  The light streaks appear more solid in the first shot as I turned the camera slowly, while I spun it a little more fast in the second.  While out there, I also tried the same trick, but instead of rotating the camera, I pulled the zoom in and out.  You can see that effect in the third photograph.  The first photograph was taken at f/16, 12sec, ISO 100 at 45mm.  The second photograph was taken at f/16, 16sec, ISO 100 at 45mm.  The third photograph was taken at f/16, 17sec, ISO 100 at 45mm and the fourth photograph was taken at f/16, 13sec, ISO 100 at 32mm.  Be sure to shoot at an aperture around f/16 so that you will get the little star effect on the lights in their original position.  You can see that best in the first and second photographs. To give you an idea of what I was shooting, I included an regular shot of the scene as the fourth photograph in this little set.  As you can see, it doesn't take very much light to make some fun little streak shots.