1. principles
  2. 'Tis the Season

'Tis the Season

By drorzel on December 9, 2006.

i-7bab8588760c8a5e253d847ba5da937b-sm_darktree.jpg

One of the problems with the logarithmic response of our eyes is that it's always kind of hard to use a camera to really capture the effect of things that light up. If there's enough light to see the background, the lights don't jump out as much as they do in person, but if you make the background darker, the lights end up oversaturated.

I kind of like the effect here, though (this is using the "Night Snapshot" setting on our Canon digital camera, with the flash turned off, followed by a bit of GIMPing to bring the levels up a bit). This does also loudly proclaim our Neville Chamberlain atheism, what with the big angel just left of the center, and the prominent Santa Claus just below center.

If you'd like a less ominous view of the tree, here it is with the lights on:

i-5968b025d0ef6b3cbbbe0b7b6684f3f7-sm_brighttree.jpg

Tags
Pictures

More like this

What is the ideal camera for the person who... well, you know....
The person who never seems to be able to operate, or be happy with, these modern digital cameras. The person who more often says "Oh, I'm so upset, I couldn't get a picture of that because this damn camera never works right" or the person who goes to take a shot but then quietly puts the camera…
Solving Tic-Tac-Toe: Game Tree Basics
Moving on from simple zero-sum games, there are a bunch of directions in which we can go. So far, the games we've looked at are very restrictive. Beyond the zero-sum property, they're built on a set of fundamental properties which ultimately reduce to the idea that no player ever has an…
Tools of the Cold-Atom Trade: Atom Detection and Imaging
This is probably the last trip into the cold atom toolbox, unless I think of something else while I'm writing it. But don't make the mistake of assuming it's an afterthought-- far from it. In some ways, today's topic is the most important, because it covers the ways that we study the atoms once we…
Hitler Zombie massacre over evolution, part 2: Unexpected victims
Note: If you're not familiar with the Hitler Zombie, here are two posts to introduce you to the creature, with the most recent installment of his terror here, in which Orac narrowly escaped the creature. And, now, the adventures (if you can call them that) continue.... PRELUDE: SEVERAL MONTHS AGO…

Beautiful tree, Chad. And I like the look of the first photo. The low levels and incandescent lights give the background a yellow tint that looks a bit like sepia, or maybe a 1970s color photo. A nice little nostalgic touch.

Also, not that you can tell from this picture, but the white thing on the other side of the red ball next to the straw angel in the center? Is an angel elephant.

(Wire wings, halo, and star held in trunk. Hey, it amused me.)

Gorgeous tree, guys. I'm pretty happy with how mine turned out, myself.

As to photographic tricks with light levels, you might find HDR as fascinating as I do. I haven't tried it yet (and apparently there's no straightforward way to accomplish it with The GIMP, sadly), but it looks bloody interesting.