o, christmas tree (and also a technique of the week)

i think i do a post like this every year. only this year, i'm not going to show you any other decorations than the tree. mainly because my computer is having trouble downloading pictures from my camera, so i have to download them onto luke's computer and then save them on a jump drive and then transfer them onto my computer. and that's just a hassle. so, since we already had the christmas pics on my computer, we'll stick to those. so, here is our cute little christmas tree.

we decided to get one that we could chop down ourselves while we were visiting the teaters in the mountains. luke wanted a tall one and i wanted a fat one. this was the one that we found.

unfortunately, it would not fit in our rental car. so luke and dad t. handily strapped it on top.

it kind of hung over the back of the car...

when we finally got it inside we realized that it was just a bit too tall.

but it was nothing that our saw couldn't handle!

we had to cut off a lot of the lower branches to get it to fit in the tree stand. so it's not so plump anymore...

getting ready to put the lights up, i realized that this would be a pretty awesome time to test out what changing the shutter speed can do...so, here is the technique of the week.

shutter speed. this would also be the "Tv" setting on a camera (my camera at least. and probably a lot of cameras). Tv stands for "Time value" and it controls how long the shutter stays open, and how much light gets in. in daylight or using a flash, in order to get perfect exposure, the setting will be incredibly fast--like 1/250--which means that the shutter is open for 1/250th of a second. when the setting is more dimly lit or darker, the shutter speed will be slower, like 1/2, which means the shutter stays open for a half a second (the "night" setting is on point-and-shoot cameras slows the shutter speed, fyi). this allows more light to get in, but it also means that if the subject you are photographing moves, or if your hand moves, the picture will turn out blurry (unless you have a tripod). the "Tv" mode of a dslr camera will manually set all the settings (iso, aperture, etc) except for shutter speed. it will then adjust the other settings as you adjust the shutter speed in order to achieve perfect exposure. so, here are the examples:

the first picture used the flash, so the shutter speed was faster at 1/60. you can see that the lights in luke's hand are still.

so then i turned off the flash, and set my shutter speed much slower--to 1/25. the result was kind of cool, but you could still see most of the lights going across the picture in kind of a jerky movement, i think this is because the shutter wasn't open long enough to get the lights going around in a full circle.

so then i slowed it to 1/4 and received almost the desired effect (plus luke moved around a little bit too much in the background, so the background appears blurry as well).

so, i finally slowed the speed down to 1/2 and this was the outcome:

then i slowed it down to stay open for a full second. the difference wasn't that huge:

so we went back to 1/2, and both held the lights on each end and swung them around the room, which i thought ended up pretty awesome:


but, we had a job to do. and luke was anxious to finish the task at hand. so he started putting my toy on the tree.

and he was ever so patient with me while i continued to snap pictures (i think i say this in a lot of my picture posts, but i mean it all the time: he is a good man).

All the lights are finished!

time for angela to grace us with her presence, yet again (only this year with new wings...hopefully these ones will actually stay on...). angela is the angel i made for our tree our first christmas, when we weren't even sure we would be able to afford a tree. i think, for me, she is a gentle reminder of humility, simplicity and contentedness. of how it was, how we aim to be, and what (at least the simplicity, but hopefully the humility and contentedness, too) we will return to in the upcoming years. if i have anything to say about it, angela will grace our tree every year that we have a tree.

luke sometimes (okay, well more than sometimes...) gets goofy with the camera. but i kind of liked this goofy picture:

and then we finished decorating the rest of the tree (i like this little pine cone angel):

all finished!

happy beginning of the christmas season, everyone! may you encounter the incarnate Jesus in His fullness, and recognize the grace and hope of the salvation He offers this Advent.