Welcome to 2025!

Firstly, HAPPY NEW YEAR!  I know we are nearly a week into the new year, but it needed to be said.

One of the photographic highlights of the Christmas period was the Christmas Tree Festival at Worcester Cathedral.  It’s a fabulous display of lots and lots of Christmas tree decorated by loads of different organisations.  There are, of course, lots of tree lights to be played with.

Here I’ve chosen a tree that had lots of lights on and used OM System’s “Live Composite” mode set on a 1/2 second base exposure.  I  rotated the camera in a circle during the exposure.  There are some interesting colours and shapes, and you can definitely see that my hands are wobbly.

A Christmas gift to me from me was something described as a “14-inch LED Fiber Optical” lamp.  It’s a colour changing base with a bundle of optical fibres in the top of it.  It’s alleged to “Light up your home with magical fun”.  I’m not sure about that, but it’s a fun thing to photograph.  I’ve used my Olympus 60mm macro lens focused on the fibres near the base.  Using a wide lens aperture has given some good “bokeh” circles from the ends of the fibres.

I bought the LED lamp so that I could use the fibre optic bundle for light painting.  Removing it from the lamp base and simply holding the tied end of the bundle against the lens of a torch gives a light painting brush.  I took a white mask and brushed the fibres against it.  I’m going to need to make a more permanent fixing method, but it’s an interesting effect that merits more experimentation.

New Year – new ideas!