Merry Christmas from Mosaic Photo

This is one of my favorite photos that I’ve taken. This was a fixed display at an annual light display at Botanica: The Wichita Gardens. It was a too dark to balance the lights with the sky, but that gave me a little bit more flexibility in my shooting. I had brought along my tripod with a cool ball head. I played with a few different techniques, zooming the lens during the exposure, changing the focus depth, and camera movement.

Quickly, I saw that I could mimic the movement of snow swooping down. This shot was a thirty second exposure, with the camera stationary for the first half of the exposure. Then, I moved the camera with my tripod head’s natural arc for the rest of the exposure. This movement gave a nice motion trail.

Little was done in post processing. A custom white balance let the blacks go to a deep blue and also shift the whites to magenta. This image was used for a Christmas card at Lawrence Photo to send out to its friends and clients.

From your friends at Mosaic Photo, Merry Christmas.