Day 187 - Happy Diwali

It's the Indian Festival of Lights and although I don't really celebrate it anymore, I still feel nostalgic about the times I did.  It's been over a decade since I've been in India to celebrate this festival, but each year I do remember to set out some lamps.

In our community, it's a custom to light thirteen lamps and scatter them around different areas of the house.  Light conquers darkness, and is a symbolic triumph of good over evil.  It's got a long history, and is part of Indian mythology.  If you are interested in finding out more, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diwali.

So, commemorating the occasion, this was the most obvious subject for this evening.

Looks like I have run out of storage!  I can't believe I have to go back and compress some photos so I can make more room! :(

Day 63 - Exposure bias

Another experiment lying in bed - I was watching the sunny patches on the trees and loved the way this tree branch kept swaying in and out of the light.  This is what finally forced me out of bed - I just had to get near the window to see what I could do with the light patches.

My camera still had my 90 mm macro on it, which I never bothered changing.  I played with the exposure bias here a little trying to figure out how not to blow out the leaves in the sunny patch.  I also read about stopping the aperture way down to get a "sunstar" effect which didn't work out quite as it should have, but the dust, cobwebs and scratches on my window created some interesting diffraction.  And did I mention in one of my earlier posts that I absolutely love the bokeh that this lens makes?

I have to admit there's a fair amount of camera shake since the shots were handheld.

Ok.. enough for now!  My head really hurts from the light from the monitor.  I hope you'll tell me a good trick to catch the light and shade of the late afternoon sun.