You can probably tell that these are Christmas tree lights. What you might not know, at least not just from looking at the photo alone, is that these are fairly unique as far as Christmas tree lights go. There’s a couple of trees in Columbia, Missouri, that are absolutely jam-packed with lights, wound so tightly around every surface of the tree that in most places you can’t even see the bark underneath. It’s a sight to behold, and one that we have seen a few times when visiting family in Columbia and which I have featured here on Weekly Fifty a time or two. This year, though, I was able to capture an image of one of the trees a bit differently thanks to my macro lens. Normally I don’t bring that lens when we visit the Magic Trees because a 105mm lens on a full-frame camera is kind of the opposite gear combo one would want in order to fit a 30-foot-tall tree in a single photo.
But this time, I decided to go all the way to the other end of the spectrum and, instead of getting far away for a shot of the entire tree, I got as close as possible to get a photo of just a couple bulbs. My thinking, and you’ll have to tell me if I’m right about this or not, was that I could find a way to convey a sense of the sheer quantity of lights on the tree to a viewer just by focusing on a very tiny slice of the whole. I got right up next to the tree, pointed my camera upwards, dialed in an exposure of f/8 with auto-ISO set to use a minimum shutter speed of 1/180 second, which resulted in an actual ISO of 1400. (The grainy effects of which were mitigated somewhat by Adobe Lightroom’s Denoise tool, of which regular readers will know I am most definitely a fan.)
I hope that even without seeing the entire tree, you the viewer might have a sense that there sure a ton of lights on it. It might be tricky to direct your attention to one of the two lights that are actually in focus, but my idea is that those two will draw your gaze and then you would start to take in all the rest that the picture has to offer. I’m not sure that entirely worked though–there’s so much to look at, and so many colors and spots of light vying for your attention, that the composition kind of collapses on itself. Where should you look? What are you looking at? What is going on? Maybe this image works best as some kind of abstract piece of modern art. Maybe it does exactly what I intended, and you have a sense that you’re looking at a tiny slice of thousands of Christmas lights.
In any case, one thing I can say for certain: I enjoyed the challenge of taking this photo, and look forward to returning to the scene, hopefully next Christmas, and giving it another try. And at the very least, this picture makes me think of time well spent with family over the Christmas season, and that by itself makes it a fine photo in my book :)
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