One Photo: An Abstract Christmas Tree

Here’s a fun photo idea for my friends who have Christmas trees. I thought I’d share this simple idea before it’s time to take down the tree. 

It will require finding the manual focus on your camera. We get so used to auto focus that sometimes we forget that our cameras can be focused manually. 

Here’s what I did. I sat on the couch in our living room, about 12 feet from the Christmas tree, which was lit with several strings of large bulbs. I held the camera in the vertical orientation. The lens was set at the largest aperture, F2.8. The lens used here was a 24-80mm (equivalent) zoom, and I zoomed to frame the image. 

Panasonic GX85 and Olympus 12-40mm @ 17mm (34mm equiv.)
1/30, F2.8, AutoISO800

At this point I switched to manual focus and focused the lens at its closest distance, somewhere around 12”.  Unfortunately this resulted in huge glowing light bulbs in the frame, and there was no hint of a tree. So, I re-focused repeatedly at gradually longer distances until I got the image I wanted. I’m guessing I might have been focusing at about the half-way point for this image. 

I posted this image on Instagram and Facebook last week, and it was well-liked. Some, including my wife, thought it might make a nice Christmas card. I think they might be right.