Scatter of light

A surprise night session with Christmas deco, wet street reflections, window rain drops, moving cars and a side view mirror. I felt like a kid in a candy store. :)

We celebrated our youngest daughter's birthday this week, and she enjoyed decorating herself with the outdoor lights.  I took the picture in color, and I'm finding that I like it better in b&w.  I prefer the way the highlights shape the lines in the image. 

Candy cane light

Took a new route last night while on our walk, and ended up on a stretch of road with a few Christmas decorations.  I had been playing around with lights and camera motion lately, and aimed to fill the frame with the shapes.  These experiments are much more entertaining to me than just photographing the lights as is.  I like the way these came out with the spirals, hearts, squiggles, and horizontals.

Beyond dead ends

Our walk last night brought us to the dead end right by the entry to the farm fields.  My young daughter was with me, and we stopped to listen to the sounds of the night.  We were surprised to hear frogs so late in the season, but maybe the warm temps brought them out for a bit.  Sparkle tugged to keep moving on, but with the ground wet from a light rain and the stroller, I didn't go further.  We sat, observed, then took a few flash shots of the dead end sign.  At first I wanted to stay stabilized to avoid camera shake, and then I had to let go of that as my daughter leaned on me for hugs.  I liked the results of shooting with flash, then intentionally moving the camera up and down or back and forth.  Of course my daughter wanted to try it, too, and the second photo above is hers.  It's one of my favorites out of the set, and got me looking at the tree in the background.  I then started shooting trees without the flash moving the camera up or down to 'paint' with the light and shapes.   Out of a handful attempts, I like the one of the pine the best.  It might be the darkness or just the novelty of it all, but it's something that will get me out there experimenting again.