Beyond the Lens - A White Christmas

Written by Tamara Kwan of TammyLynn Photography

Featured on I am Gloucestershire 365's website under FYI Daily Blog on Saturday, 01 January 2011

This past Christmas was my first ever White Christmas. It was also my first Christmas without any of my children at home. Well they aren’t exactly children anymore, but they will always be my babies...no matter how old they get. So what do you do when your children aren’t home for Christmas? Well you sleep in, have a long lazy morning, cook a big breakfast with homemade blueberry pancakes, pack a lunch and go for a lovely long walk with your husband.

What is a ‘White Christmas’? For most I think a ‘White Christmas’ means a covering of snow on the ground on Christmas Day. Ideally snowing on the day as well. But if you are placing bets on a ‘White Christmas’ down at the local betting shop, then it means something else. To win a bet on it being a ‘White Christmas’ then a single snowflake has to be officially observed falling in the 24 hour period of the 25^th of December. I’m not a betting person, so I enjoyed my first ‘White Christmas’. J

The above photograph was taken this past Christmas Day and is a view over the frozen Stradford Park Lake in Stroud. The tempature this day was around -3c and had been below freezing for quite some time. Camera used was a Canon 5D II with a 24-70 2.8 L lens. Camera settings were set to Aperture Priority, F/9, ISO 200 with a shutter speed of 1/80^th of a second, hand held.

Here’s another photo taken down by the lake a few minutes later:

Sledging on Christmas Day....It doesn’t get much better than this.  

Beyond the Lens- Shooting by Moonlight

Written by Tamara Kwan of TammyLynn Photography

Featured on I am Gloucestershire 365's website under FYI Daily Blog on Friday, 24 December 2010

A few nights ago, last Saturday, we had a lovely clear bright night. The moon was almost full and the snow was reflecting the moonlight beautifully. Well, it wasn’t quite as bright as the image above of Rodborough Church makes it seem, as you can see from the clock on the tower it’s 11 o’clock at night. This was a 30 Second exposure.

There’s a bit more than a long exposure going on here as well. My husband was running around the image with a flashlight painting the windows, a few of the monuments and one o f the trees with light. As it was a long exposure and he was constantly moving he doesn’t show up in the image. If he’d stood still for a moment you would have clearly seen him as he was wearing a bright yellow jacket.

With any long exposure you need your camera mounted on a tripod or sat down on something nice and solid. On this occasion I used a heavy duty Gorilla Pod (type of small flexible tripod) and a handy stone wall. I put the camera on manual settings as I wanted to use a 30 second exposure. I also set the two second timer for a slight delay after I pressed the shutter to reduce camera shake. My other settings were an ISO of 200 at f4.

I love how the sky turned out purplish and how you can just make out the stars. The yellow in the background behind the church isn’t the sun rising but is actually street lights down below the church on the other side.

I really enjoyed this late night stroll by moonlight with my husband. I think we might do this again soon. Of course I’ll be bringing my camera and a few torches.  ;-) 

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The above photo was featured in the local weekly paper, Stroud Life,  this past Wednesday, 22 December 2010. 

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It also made the BBC Radio Gloucestershire website. In Pictures: December snow in Gloucestershire:

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I also have a photo in the January 2011 issue of Cotswold Life this month which has just hit the shelves.