Tis The Season To Be Jolly

Hello! You can actually see my reflection on the ornament holding the camera

What I love most about Christmas is the beautiful and colorful decorations but it's been a few years now that I've stopped putting up the Christmas tree and the lights. I don't even know what Christmas is all about anymore. I just know I'm broke as hell when Christmas rolls around. I get mixed emotions of happiness and sadness but one thing is certain, I always keep myself busy and distracted...A full time job, 3 kids, 2 blogs, and a shopping addiction...Damn, life is good (I think).

Anyways, my sister called me up last weekend and ask me to take some Christmas photos of her little family. Of course I said yes...I'm a noob who needs practice and friends and family is always a good start.

I made the mistake of arriving at her house without taking my tripod, LOL...I didn't even start and I failed already! But I'll make sure that this is on my checklist for next time. To be honest, I don't use the tripod very often cause it can get in the way but I've learned from this experience that I could've taken much better sharper pictures. Most of my pictures were a little fuzzy cause I couldn't keep a steady hand. 

As far as lighting, I had nothing fancy but gotta do with whatchu got, right? So it was pretty much just indoor lighting, some daylight coming through the windows and lights from the Christmas tree. I am hoping that in the next few months, I have a better lighting equipment for indoor shooting.

I thought I was shooting Raw, which is something I wanted to try, and again I failed, LOL. I did not get my settings right so I ended up shooting Jpeg. I'm definitely taking note as I learn from these stupid mistakes.
I find small children very difficult to photograph cause they can't stay still. Don't even talk about group photos because if one kid looks alright, the other is looking away or moving around. Photographing kids will take a lot of trials and errors for me to get it right.

By the way, this is Max, my sister's dog. He's a rat terrier. He's not very photogenic. He didn't want to even look at me or even pose. He just laid there minding his own business. I guess I should've offered some treats huh.

All these pictures were taken with Canon T3i, 50mm f/1.4 lens...Aperture f 1.6, Shutter Speed 1/20 sec, and 400 ISO.

At last, I managed to make the final touches on these pictures by fixing the light, contrast, and colors using Adobe Lightroom 4.2 and Photoshop 7.0. I say they look pretty decent. I'm still learning so I am hoping that in the next year or so when I look back at my older pix, that I see a significant change in the quality.

Happy Holidays! May you have a wonderful Christmas and Happy New Year.