Posts in Category: Christmas
Home for Christmas Edition: Bluebird!
Eastern Bluebird: Kennebunk, Maine, USA, December 2022 — For Christmas Day, something close to home. We only started getting Bluebirds in our yard about 6 years ago, and I am still surprised and blessed each day they show up in winter. We had 6 on the deck on Christmas Eve day…and I am sure they will be back today. Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Pro on the Mac Air. ISO 1000 @ f4 @ 1/500th. Plus 1EV.
Christmas Edition: 12/24/2015
Merry Christmas
We have this Christmas cactus that has faithfully bloomed twice a year for the past 5 years at least. It blooms just before and through Christmas, and then it blooms again, just before and through Easter. We don’t do anything special to it. It just does it. I take pictures of the blooms each year, both seasons. It is certainly a faithful reminder of the miracle of Jesus…the great gift of God to us in the Son of God and Son of Man, who came so that we could believe, and choose life and love. As I post this Christmas Eve (or coming up to it), I am thinking of the day tomorrow, when our family, and families all around the world, will celebrate both life and love by gathering, by exchanging gifts…in their worship and their fellowship together. Christ is born! And, for those of us who choose, that makes all the difference.
This is my Christmas post. I will joining in the celebration tomorrow. Have a very Merry Christmas, and I will see you all on the 26th.
Merry Christmas Girls
Sarah (1), Erin (4), Emily (2), Kelia (5), Anna (3)
These years, Christmas might be the only time we see all 5 of our girls together. Sarah flew home for a few days from Pittsburgh. Emily drove up from Boston. Anna is at home for a few weeks on her way to grad school in Santa Fe in January. Erin came down from college in Farmington and Kelia up from HART School of Music. Traditionally the extended family gathers for Christmas Eve at one of my wife, Carol’s, sister’s home. We were just back so my girls are still in their party clothes. 🙂
My hope for you all is that the spirit brought into this world by the birth of the baby Jesus would pervade your lives and the lives of those you love…today and every day. Merry Christmas.
Sony HX400V in “anti-image-motion-blur” mode…which I find works well for low light party shots. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
After Christmas Cactus
Our Christmas Cactus is in full bloom now, and I have been tempted to a few more natural light shots. Some of the blossoms hang down in front of a mostly black speaker grill, so it is possible it isolate them against the fabric. With some tweaking in post-processing, I can get a solid black background. Natural light preserves the delicate shades of purple in the flower, but makes hand-holding the camera a challenge. The efficient IS on the Samsung helps.
Samsung Smart Camera WB800F. ISO 400 @ 1/8th second @ f2.9. 28mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Joy to the World! Happy Sunday!
We waited to decorate the house for Christmas until my youngest daughter came home from college. We don’t do a lot. A tree with its collection of ornaments built up over our life together, a few creches, each with its own history, and a string of lights…but it makes the house festive and fills it with memories of Christmas past…and hope for the future 🙂
This is a hand-carved creche we found in Albuquerque’s Old Town, years ago, and it is still one of my favorites. It came from a Christmas Shop that was, litterally, filled with creches and was, at the time, one of the few we could afford. One of the wise men has gone missing over the years, but we still put it out every Christmas. It is elegant in its simplicity. And here, where the girls happened to place it this year, it forms an interesting tableau with the Christmas Cactus hanging over it. Interesting enough for a natural light photo.
Samsung Smart Camera WB800F. Smart Auto set the exposure to its Low Light mode and captured the scene at ISO 200. Processed as an HDR in Snapseed and then fine tuned using the Tune Image and Detail tools. Cropped slightly at the sides.
And for the Sunday Thought: The image is both exotic, highly unlikely, with the ornate blossoms of a cactus native to the coast of south-eastern Brazil, grown now, for many years, here in Southern Maine, hanging over a creche bought in Albuquerque New Mexico, and carved, if I remember rightly, somewhere in Asia…and homely in its simplicity. The carving is rough…simple…suggesting the subjects more than rendering them, and the composition is casual but studied, with each figure placed to please. The whole reaches toward, and is charged with, a celebration of the birth in the stable…which was certainly both exotic in its unlikely juxtaposition of the earthly and the divine…and humble in itself. The light here, spilling in at the edges, catches every detail, and makes the colors burn with intensity. It is a fitting image, I think, to convey at least a little of the totally unlikely birth that changed the world…and goes on changing it, one person at a time, as individuals identify with the story, and are touched by the loving reality behind it…as the light breaks in at the edges, and makes the colors of love burn with a transforming intensity.
Happy Sunday! And a Joyous Christmas to you and yours!
Christmas Cactus
I have not had anything to share for Floral Friday for months now. It is certainly the non-flowering season in Southern Maine, and I have been concentrating on other things…birds and bugs…on my trips further afield. But this week, our faithful Christmas Cactus, now many years old, proved it was worth tending it during its long dormancy by bursting into bloom…just in time for Christmas!
I have been playing with natural light shots. This is from a fair distance, 4 feet or so, using the long end of the zoom on the Samsung Smart Camera WB800F and Smart Auto Macro. Dedicated Macro Mode on the Samsung auto sets the zoom to about 28mm, but Smart Auto Macro allows similar results at all zoom lengths. Go figure. ISO 800 @ 1/20th @ f5.8. 408mm equivalent field of view.
Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014. Gamma decreased slightly in dev.macgiver’s Photo Editor. Cropped slightly for composition.
Merry Christmas to all!
It is strange how strongly identified Christmas has become with the Currier and Ives vision of a New England winter scene. Especially when you consider what a small percentage of those in the US, and certainly in the world, have ever experienced Christmas in those circumstances. As I write this there is a flurry of snow falling outside my Southern Maine, not quite New England, window with just a dusting showing on bare ground, and I admit that, hope against hope, I am hoping for ground cover by mid-day. These days you can not count on a white Christmas in New England. I think we have had only 2 out of the past 5 years. I had to go back to January of this year to find this image.
And certainly the source of Christmas, the reason for the season, the greatest story ever told, does not include, or justify, a snowy countryside nostalgia. Joseph and Mary had enough trouble with the inn and all without seeing them, and the donkey, trudging through fresh snow.
So, I am going to have to just go with it. When I think of Christmas it is a white Christmas…and I am always slightly disappointed when it is not. We have a chance…just a slim, 30% at any given hour, maybe totaling 1 inch…chance today.
But wherever you are celebrating (or not celebrating) Christmas today, I wish you the blessings of unconditional love, complete forgiveness, absolute mercy, and a grace…a gift of hope…that goes well beyond whatever you might deserve. I give my thanks for that gift, which I for one desperately need, to God in Jesus Christ, remembering the birth of the Son of God, the Son of Man, and the Prince of Peace…and celebrating in the spirit of creative love that, miraculously, still lives in me. Merry Christmas to you all.