25 Days of Christmas Challenge: Day 1

Today is the first day of my made up Christmas challenge. Each day (until Christmas) I'll take a picture to represent all the things I love about this time of year! This first picture, making my tree glow, is something I saw on Pinterest (my new internet time suck) and I couldn't wait to try out. Unfortunately, my boys, are less than enthusiastic or cooperative when it comes to Mommy practicing with her camera, so I often have to resort to bribery. Tonight, I bribed them with candy to be my assistants.

So, yes, this image is totally posed, and while I prefer to "capture the moment" it is a lot harder to do that when you're trying to duplicate a specific technique and you have unwilling assistants. It is the reason I have had to resort to using stuffed animals as models before.  Anyway, as it turns out, after re-reading her post, I went about it all wrong! I'm still happy with my image but you don't get the same sense of "glowing tree" in my image.

 Here is what I did differently, I was not in manual mode, I was in TV mode (or shutter priority) and I used a lower ISO, a much slower shutter speed (which increased the aperture to f/22) and I spot metered on the boys, instead of the tree. Two things that were the same, were, the room was dark and I didn't use a flash. So with those above settings the end result is this: close, but no cigar!
 ISO: 1600

Aperture: f/22

Shutter: 1 second