Photographing Santa Claus Ornaments That are Hanging on the Tree

Dept 56 Early 1990's

I want to admit this now, I just found this post that I started on January 2nd in my "drafts". I'm actually publishing it on August 26th.

It was my intention and probably my New Year's Resolution to begin documenting my vast number of Santas that I have collected/hoarded over 25+ years.

I can't say that anything I have done over the past year has been so overly time consuming that I would not have time to post a brief essay about a particular Santa or collection of Santas on this blog, but apparently, like my Santas that stay up all year, this blog was a bit neglected.

If I recall correctly, I was taking down my tree and decided to stop and photograph some of my ornaments. These images can be found in other posts. For some reason, I had added four images to this textless draft and I have no idea what topic of choice I had planned on doing with them.

Funny Little Crocheted Santa Face

So, instead of waxing poetic about all I know about Santas, or what I can find on the internet and retell in my blog, I decided to take this time to explain how I created these images.

First, I THINK I used my portrait lens, a Nikon AF Nikkor 85mm1:18 D. I say this because this lens has been on my D90 for quite a while since I take a lot of portraits.

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I like this lens, because it does take some very sweet portraits by softening the skin when I focus on the eyes. It is also good for close-ups...but not too close up. This is why I believe I had my camera set on the automatic micro setting (the one with the tulip) and my flash turned off.

As you can tell by this post...I am not a technical photographer.

I just have fun!








I also came up with a 3 step Photoshop design (not counting adding my name) by selecting the ornament, making a copy, then use a Gaussian Blur on the original to further blur the background thus making the ornament stand out. Then I selected the frame tool and made another copy but adjusted the lighting a couple of times to make is stand out.

So, enough of that!

Just enjoy the images and this Christmas, take some photos of YOUR favorite ornaments!