With the Christmas season rapidly approaching, decided to try my hand at shooting a Christmas card. Went to Michaels for a few “Christmasy” things, the store was packed with Christmas stuff and shoppers. This makes me wonder if I am already too late to be ready for Christmas and we have not had Thanksgiving yet.

Trying to stage a shot taught me a few things.

Here is what I learned…

1. It is harder than it looks to get a pretty arrangement.
2. Shooting a shiny object is tougher than it looks.
3. I need to understand lighting better.

All said, I will have to try my hand at this again. I still have the blooming paper white narcissus and poinsetta to play around with macro shots.

Notice that I have cropped the snowman. I was trying shoot the snowman with candles and smelled something burning. It was the snowman’s hat. Actually, that is a fourth thing that I learned. It is hard to shoot candle flames without blowing out the highlights and keep the flames away from flammable objects.

I talked to Mother in the middle of the shoot. She suggested going to Walgreens and buying Christmas hats for the dogs. I doubt my dogs would put up with that!