Christmas starts here

We went to our local garden centre on the latest photography club outing with a challenge to capture 'Groups of Objects'

'Cups of Joy'
'Three Baubles'

The Christmas displays at this time of year make for exciting compositions and the bright vivid colours are wonderful. The array of different objects, whilst a little overwhelming

'Red hats and Carrots Noses'

at first are thrilling when you 'get into it' however be prepared that it will take you a few shots and bit of wondering around before you begin to 'see' the picture possibilities. Permission is needed of course.

'Masked Christmas Gold'

'Teddies on Parade'

But you do have to be prepared to be patient and a little thick skinned as no-one is

'Three Baubles II'
tolerant to a tripod and a photographer in their way so you can't really get away with taking time to compose shots, a picture from further away that you can crop in closer when you get home is much easier to achieve.

'Us Three'
and flash photography is not allowed so sometimes its difficult to stop camera shake or get enough light in the darker areas of the display.

'Trees-a-plenty'

I think the trick is to take lots of shots and be prepared to edit when you get home. Take a look at Kat's blog post on aspect ratios, it gives very useful information on cropping your images. Take the time to try your picture cropped in different ways, you could even make a copy and produce two very different images from the same original shot.

The effects are worth it, I have turned these images into very nice little Christmas cards.