Christmas Day and Hence

Another Christmas has come and gone, with few consequences thereof. The world didn't end, the economy didn't fix itself with holiday shopping, and my hair is still ridiculously short.

On Christmas Day my family and I drove 3 1/2 hours south east to Fowler Colorado to see some family. I realized that it has been a long time since I have been down there when it was actually green, and the crops in the fields were tall. (It is a big farming community, if you hadn't already guessed.)

While we were down there, there is a tradition called the "Cousins Walk" where all of the cousins (obviously) go on a walk around the farm trails. It was ridiculously cold (probably around 9 degrees Fahrenheit) so I decided to bring along my D600, to see how it handled the extreme cold.

I couldn't be happier, as it handled it like a champ! No slowing down of the card, no super fast battery drain, the back LCD even worked great!

Here are a few of my pictures from that very cold walk:

 I like how you can see all of the snow sort of shimmering in these two images (though it is harder to see in the upper one). I used a Tiffen 0.9 (3 stop) Neutral Density filter for the whole walk, to that I could have a bit slower shutter speeds than 1/2000.

 Two more sort of random pictures. There is a small stream running through my families farm, with quite a bramble in it, which is the backdrop for most of these pictures.



And here is my brother looking like a boss without a hat at what I could guess was about a 0 degree windchill. Also he is wearing his 3d glasses that we got from seeing "The Hobbit, an Unexpected Journey."

Now that is enough from a few days ago, now I'll say something from today. I went out for a half hour or so walk with my D600 and my tripod, hoping to try some more stuff with my ND filter. So I went back over to the place with the little bridge that I posted pictures of a couple posts again just to see what I could get.

I could pull about a 1/3rd of a second shutter speed through my ND filter, so still not super slow, but enough to get the water flow. It would help if I went back later in the day when there was less light.

I'll leave you with this last picture is one of the behemoth trees in our neighborhood, as we are off to see Les Miserables.

Preow,

Kevin

TV: NCIS
Movie: Les Mis
Game: Castle Crashers on PC
Music: The Heist by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis
Food: Panda Express

Christmas Eve

Well, its that time of year again. The time when many people dread going back home and seeing their families.

That's right, Christmas!

First order of business I would like to compare my Christmas eve/day post from last year (2011) to this post that I am writing. this is mostly academic for myself, as I want to see how far my photography has come since then. I will probably do a side-by-side comparison of similar pictures that I took this year (which I did on purpose should I chose to do a comparison).

However, from looking over what I posted last year, it seems to be fairly similar at least in feel. The technical aspects, however, are quite different. First off, this year I have a FULL FRAME DSLR with high quality glass, as opposed to an APS-C crop-sensor entry level camera with a kit lens. I am pretty much where I wanted to end off, with a Full Frame sensor, so I couldn't be happier.

All of these pictures, then, were taken with my lovely D600.

 So we had our traditional Christmas Eve service, like usual. I focused more on the details with my camera, so an not to be to distracting to others.

Let's start off with our Christmas Tree. This picture below is my parents tree, which because of the High Park Fire, they finally broke down and got an artificial tree. 

 Here are a few detail shots in the sanctuary, and a few that I took during hte candle-lit portion of the service. Always one of my favorite parts.

As I said before, I really like the candle-lit portion of the service, as it is just relaxing and very nice. It also afforded a good opportunity to snag a couple good pictures before they turned the lights back on.














Once we got home, but before dinner, my brother felt like doing his "firewire" thing again, so I got one good shot of that.

Then we had a nice steak dinner, very similar to last year, and now I am sitting here writing this, so I should end this pretty soon.

Now, to end things off, this may be one of the best pictures that I have taken since I started getting more serious about photography. My personal opinion, yes, but I really like the composition and lighting.

Preow,

Kevin

TV: Iron Chef America
Movie: LotR
Music: The National, Macklemore
Game: Castle Crashers on PC
Food: Steak!