354/365 Lit Up

'A Different Perspective On Light"

We have officially made it to Christmas break!  If I had an extra week I might be ready to face Christmas.  As things stand right now, I'm not.  Most of the "stuff" that needs to be done is done.  I have even wrapped most of what needs to be wrapped.  My issue this year seems to be a mental thing.  My head just can't wrap itself around the fact that Christmas is five days away.  Im not sure where or how  I got off track this year, but it is a very weird feeling.

We did go to the symphony last night to hear their Christmas concert.  For a couple of hours I was in the Christmas spirit.  Other than last night's concert, I don't even feel like I have listened to much Christmas music this season.  Usually by this time of year, even before Christmas, I have heard so much of it I'm ready to just move on.

This funk I'm in seems to be manifesting itself in my photos as well.  We went to look at a nearby light display tonight.  It is beautiful and unquestionably quite festive.  I took lots of photographs, but none of them really moved me.  It seemed like there was something not quite right with each of them.  With many of the images, the problem was the same; there were pole lights illuminating the sidewalks that distracted from the beauty of the tree lights.  Many people would probably overlook this, but once I noticed it, that was all I could see.  I loved the colors of the lights, the shapes of the trees and their reflection in the water.  Those path lights though, even with decent starbursts, were just plain annoying to me.

I thought about trying to edit out the lights.  First of all, that was more time and effort than I had to give to this project and secondly, the path lighting was also reflected in the water so they really couldn't be removed without creating another level of weirdness in the photo.  I liked the way the reflection of these lights looked, even with the undesirable pole lights.  I then decided to try an experiment.  I flipped the photograph vertically thus placing the trees' reflection "right side up" and the actual trees in the place of the reflection.  I was pleasantly surprised.

Suddenly the light from the intrusive path lights looked like stars shooting from amidst the trees and the lights themselves as the stars that had landed on the ground..  These lights became much less of a distraction.  And the abstractness of the now upright trees spoke to me.  This photo is meant to be upside down, which is now right side up.

All week long I have been playing with different lights and lighting effects.  Tonight's outdoor shots are a continuation of that.  I was happy to create the starburst effect with the lights on branches of this tree.

Here is an image of the trees and their reflection "correctly" oriented.  I managed to avoid all but one of the annoying lights in this one.

For some reason, I don't like this as much as the flipped image.

This next photo is also indicative of my weird state of mind.  I was created with intentional camera motion.  It gives the trees an interesting feeling of dimension.  I may not like it tomorrow, but tonight I find it somewhat fascinating.

I hope that a good night's sleep that involves no alarm clock in the morning will snap me out of this mood and get me ready to enjoy the girls' birthdays and then Christmas.