Photo Assignment; December '06: Holidays

[handicap18]

Once again a new month brings a new photo assignment. I know there are a few threads going on here and over in the community board about x-mas photos, but we'll make this one the "official" photo assignment.

If you haven't been to Disney during the holidays you are missing out on a lot of bueatiful decorations all around the parks and hotels. That doesn't mean that you can't find some decorations or holiday themed photo opportunities of your own around your area. Do you decorate your home inside and/or outside? Does your town put up a lot of decorations in the public areas? Maybe there is a local zoo that has a big holiday theme (I know there is one not to far from me that advertises "Holiday ZooLights". What about other places in your area. In Southeastern Massachusetts there is a place called Edaville Railroad (though I think the now call it Edaville USA now after having been closed for a few years) that puts up a very big holiday display around their park including a fireworks display once a week. I'm sure there are other places around the country and around the world that do similar things.

You can take pictures of displays inside or outside, big displays, small displays, orniments, your house, other peoples house, people in holiday dress formal and informal anything related to the holidays. Get creative. This assignment includes aspects of past assignments (ie: low light/night time, and future assignments ie: landscape, macro, portraits to name a few).

Get out there. Use your camera. And most importantly have fun! Hopefully we'll learn something along the way.

 

[sk8belle]

Kicking things off with two photos from this year's Osborne Lights:

 

[bdtracey]

sk8belle: I've never seen WDW at Christmas before! That is absolutely incredible! So beautiful! I'm now racking my brain on how I can get there for Christmas so that I can see all of the beautiful decorations! How did you get such a nice low light picture without the flash?

I'm going to try playing with my manual settings and see how slow of a shutter speed I can have with the ISO maxed out at 400 before I get blurry pictures. The gorillapod tripod is probably the best thing I've bought for my camera yet.

Has anyone here tried the various filters that you can get for your lenses? Polarized, UV, etc??? I'm thinking about trying to get some but I don't know how much success people have had with them.

 

[bdtracey]

These are a couple of other pics from my Christmas party last weekend at the Banff Springs. I know I posted one on the November project thread but here are a couple more...still on topic though because snow is somewhat representive of Christmas....right?

 

[Timeless]

Here are a couple I took at Bright Lights in Springfield Mass last night

 

[bdtracey]

I love the ornament shots! I'm definitely going to give that a shot, you need to be pretty skilled so that you can't see the camera! Nice work Timeless! You had to be using a tripod for those eh?

 

[Timeless]

I love the ornament shots! I'm definitely going to give that a shot, you need to be pretty skilled so that you can't see the camera! Nice work Timeless! You had to be using a tripod for those eh?

No tripod, I used my 50mm F1.8 lens and set the ISO at 1600. I actually shot those out the car window as you are not allowed to exit the car. The ornament was shot in the gift shop.

 

[sk8belle]

sk8belle: I've never seen WDW at Christmas before! That is absolutely incredible! So beautiful! I'm now racking my brain on how I can get there for Christmas so that I can see all of the beautiful decorations! How did you get such a nice low light picture without the flash?

bdtracey, here's the EXIF data from the shots:

Peace on Earth:
Exposure time: 0.714 s
Aperture: f/6.1
ISO equiv.: 400
Exposure bias: 1.00
Whitebalance: Auto
Metering Mode: matrix
Exposure: aperture priority (semi-auto)

Wide-angle street shot:
Focal length: 10.1mm (35mm equivalent: 48mm)
Exposure time: 0.065 s (1/16)
Aperture: f/3.1
ISO equiv.: 400
Exposure bias: 0.30
Whitebalance: Auto
Metering Mode: matrix
Exposure: aperture priority (semi-auto)

And, somehow, I managed to keep my hands steady enough to take both without a tripod. I had my Gorillapod with me (LOVE that thing!), but didn't have much to set it up on to be able to get the shots I wanted.

If you manage to find a way to go to Disney during the holidays, jump on it. I was there in early Nov. (11/3 - 11) and the parks were just getting decorated, so you can avoid some of the holiday rush by going earlier. However, they hadn't started on the hotels yet, so it might be better to go later than Veterans' Day weekend.

 

[sk8belle]

Timeless, I love the ornament shot!

 

[bdtracey]

sk8belle, I don't really know what all of those settings are but I bet if I had an SLR I would...your camera's gotta be an SLR eh? I wanna get a Nikkon D80 but I just finished saving up for our camcorder...picking it up tomorrow, it's on sale $100 off!!!!

 

[sk8belle]

Nope. Mine's a point and shoot. I use a Nikon Coolpix P4.

 

[handicap18]

sk8belle, I don't really know what all of those settings are but I bet if I had an SLR I would...your camera's gotta be an SLR eh? I wanna get a Nikkon D80 but I just finished saving up for our camcorder...picking it up tomorrow, it's on sale $100 off!!!!

you can use P&S camera's in the same way you use a dSLR. Full auto with different icon modes (ie: landscape, portrait, action, etc... where the camera chooses everything) or just regular AUTO (camera also chooses everything) or P (program) where you choose the ISO and the camera chooses the shutter and aperture or Shutter Priority (you choose ISO and shutter speed, camera chooses aperture) or Aperture Priority (you choose aperture {f/stops} and ISO and camera chooses shutter speed) or full manual where you choose everything and the camera only focuses.

DSLR's give you the advantage of better lenses, better high ISO performance, better low light performance, ability to change lenses including very wide and very long and very wide amound many other things.

 

[Virgo10]

A couple from Cypress Gardens that I took last year.

And a couple of Disney World ones.

 

[Groucho]

sk8belle: I've never seen WDW at Christmas before! That is absolutely incredible! So beautiful! I'm now racking my brain on how I can get there for Christmas so that I can see all of the beautiful decorations!

No need to go right at Chrismas - most of the decorations go up in November. Late November (after Thanksgiving) and early December are terrific times to visit - low crowds and all decked out for the holidays.

You might also want to watch the Holiday special on the Food Network - it's airing tomorrow at 5. It's from last year but is a lot of fun. Two years ago they had another on the Discovery Channel was was less food-focused. (Thanks to Tivo, I have just about every Disney park-related TV from from the past few years on DVD now!) You can check upcoming park-related shows on this site, or get on the mailing list (details there) and every week you'll get a listing of upcoming shows for the week.

I'm not happy with most of my pics from my last trip, but here's one that shows a few of the Main St decorations. I was trying to use our stroller to act as a poor man's tripod... I think I brought my real tripod but never actually used it. That shall all be rectified next trip! This pic could also use some cropping, top and bottom, but I decided to put the work towards going through more pictures organized and online rather than taking a long time on these ones.

 

[handicap18]

No need to go right at Chrismas - most of the decorations go up in November. Late November (after Thanksgiving) and early December are terrific times to visit - low crowds and all decked out for the holidays.

You might also want to watch the Holiday special on the Food Network - it's airing tomorrow at 5. It's from last year but is a lot of fun. Two years ago they had another on the Discovery Channel was was less food-focused. (Thanks to Tivo, I have just about every Disney park-related TV from from the past few years on DVD now!) You can check upcoming park-related shows on this site, or get on the mailing list (details there) and every week you'll get a listing of upcoming shows for the week.

Agreed!!! We went the week after Thanksgiving last year and are going the same week next year. It is a GREAT time to go. The Sunday after Thanksgiving starts value season for about 3 weeks. So its inexpensive too. Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party starts the week before Thanksgiving, then they take Thanksgiving week off, then start up again after Thanksgiving till just before X-mas Day. The Osborne Lights officialy open around the 13th of November and most of the hotels are also decorated around then or soon there after. I didn't have my D50 yet when we went last year, so I can't wait for next year. The countdown began about 3 months ago. We've finally made it past the 365 day mark!

Groucho, thanks for the info about the shows and that web site. It will come in handy and will definately be used by me!!

Ok folks, lets get some more holiday pictures!

 

[Decfish]

Taken Thanksgiving week...it was truly cold enough for real snowflakes.

 

[RobinMarie]

My daughter and nephew

 

[handicap18]

Here is our front yard and one of the Disney orniments on the tree:

Handheld, ISO 1600, 1/25th f/3.5

Handheld, ISO 1600, 1/80th f/1.8

I took a bunch of orniment pic's, but a lot didn't come out very good. I started with the ISO too low, then had a lot of tree movement and I had the flash and diffuser on the camera which added to much weight to the camera for these low light shots, so I got a little bit of camera shake. I'll have to play around again. We're getting a bunch of new Disney orniments from the disneystore.com (65% off!!). They should be in tomorrow. Once they're up and I get a chance, I'll snap off a few more pics.

 

[Sanka]

 

[sk8belle]

Kyle, the Tinkerbell photo is great. I love the lighting.