Christmas Cakes, anyone?

December week 3 christmas challenge is Christmas Food, constraints: photo must be unadultered (ie. straight jpg and no tweaks whatsoever). Food should also be self made if possible. I think I failed for this week challenge because I haven't cooked anything yet, christmas or not christmas food, during the last week!

Ok, fine I thought I'd take some pictures of nice christmas cake I found on the shop. But then I forgot to change the setting from RAW to JPG! Grrrrr! Anyway, here are some that I took. The first one is RAW but without any other change besides adding borders and signature.

This second one was taken at a cupcake shop in Sydney city. I brightened the exposure a bit. I think my Canon 30D does have a slight darker metering in most cases.

Third picture, from the same shop. Aren't these cute? It cost 3.50 each. Quite cheap, but no nutritional content is guaranteed.

Christmas decorations with 70mm

The 2nd week of December challenge was Christmas decorations with a 70mm lens. This first picture was taken in a dollar shop in Burwood shopping centre, NSW.  My model of the day helped me to arrange the stuff in style. It has red,green white and gold. But in the end I decided to make the photo sephia coloured,  to hide all the stuff in the background that was to distracting. All well, except then my friend Agman said that what would be the challenge if it is arrange? Well well.

So here is the 2nd picture, my 2nd entry 'without arrangement!'  It is taken from the window of a jewelry stall, also in Burwood. I turned the temperature a bit to give a more bluish colour.

What do you think? Which do you prefer?

Christmas tree with 50mm?

So after spending last Christmas in a country that doesn't celebrate it even as a public holiday, this Christmas is a welcomed change.

As as result of discussion with several photographer friends, we decided that it would be cool to have weekly photo challenges starting December. The first week in December was Christmas Tree. The challenge? getting a picture of one with 50mm lens. Pictured here was my entry for the pool.

Now considering we all each has a cropped body camera, 50 mm translates to 75mm full frame. Did you see the difficulty yet?

First, finding a Christmas tree. Too small, and the decorations won't be as nice, medium sized tree will only give you the very top end of the tree. Big trees? you need to find a public one and get really far, and therefore might have obstacles people walking in between your lens and the tree.

After going around the city and several shopping malls. The one I choose was from Martin's Place, Sydney. It's a big 21m tall tree with 1.5m southern star at the top. As you can see i only got about 1/4 of the tree there. It helps that there is a city hall (?) clock nearby it.

Obviously I prefer getting the shot with a wide angle lens. Like this.