Friday, February 5, 2010

Week 5: The late assignment

A little over a year ago I started a photo group at work. I was involved in one at my previous job and liked it so much I thought it would be fun to do where I work now. We've got a core group of about 10 or so people who participate.

On a monthly basis we have a shooting assignment - a theme to take pictures for. The theme for this past month was Holiday, and like everyone else in the group I put off taking the photo for a while. I ended up running out of time and the week before the meeting I had to create a shot for the theme. Since all my lights were taken down from Xmas about a month ago I ended up taking some out of the decoration box and stringing them up in the basement.

In my head I had envisioned putting the lights up downstairs and playing around with a glowstick drawing a christmas tree in the foreground. It was a bit trickier than I thought. Not so much on the exposure side, but on the positioning side.

I took probably 20 different shots, and this one is the best of the bunch. I wanted the tree centered, but it just did not happen. Something about a dark basement lit only by the soft glow of christmas lights and a green glow stick makes it tough to line things up just right.



Canon 50mm f/1.4 on the 30D
30sec exposure at f/4.5, ISO 100

2 comments:

Abbie said...

I think it looks really cool! Nice idea. The "glow stick tree" is quite clean. I've done something like this before with a flashlight -- it's really hard to get your lines right... much less to match them up together at the top. So, nicely done!

-Abbie

Cait said...

For a last-minute shot, this is a super idea, and I think it came out really well! Love the idea of a work-photo group too...