Christmas 2009

This year’s Christmas almost seemed anti-climatic.  It was a fairly stress-free holiday.  Since the family plans were late afternoon Christmas and the evening of the 26th, I didn’t have any plans on Christmas Eve or the morning of Christmas.  So, it was Christmas Eve and I was wrapping gifts when I decided I wanted to do something else for my nieces, Samantha and Rachel.  During the summer we had done a photo shoot for a newspaper ad that I did the photography.  At that time they asked if I could take some of the photos and put the Eifel Tower in the background.  I said sure but forgot about it until Christmas Eve.  That how I spent Christmas Eve.  I took two pictures of the girls, extracted the chroma-green background and added them to a photos of the Eifel Tower model at the Paris Casino in Las Vegas.

  

Then I decided to do one more.  This time I used a Christmas theme.

  

By now it was getting near midnight and I had another thought.  What about a trip to the beach.  A cold front had blown through so the temperature would be cold but it would also blow out all the smog and haze too.  Great time for some sunrise photos.  Checking the sunrise time, I set my alarm for 4am.  I know way too early for me but I had to do it.  So with about 4 hours sleep, I got up and headed to Galveston.  Here are the results.  All were shot in RAW with a little bump in the color saturation.  Some are multiple exposures to evenly expose the sandy foreground and get the rich colors in the sky.  Others were shot with an on-camera flash and the rest are single exposures.  In the background there are several ships going into the Houston ship channel.  The lights at the sea level in the distance are from oil platforms.  The hi-rise is the Endeavour complex on the East end of the beach near the jetties.

Enjoy and Happy New Year.