The Magic of Black Backgrounds

 Bored. With temps in the -9 F range and wind chills much lower, I decided to stay indoors except for chores. 

I was...

Bored. Bored.

So I decided to look up and learn some more about photographing with an invisible black background. I tried it once before with little success. So I spent Friday evening watching some tutorials and found a photographer from the UK that explained and went through how to do it so easily.

He also took apart an old picture frame to create stunning reflections and used the back part of the frame to hold up an appropriate backdrop for his work. He used a simple flash light to create dramatic photos of macro images. He used feathers, flowers, and other beautiful things. 

I thought I'd try some Christmas stuff.

The set up was super simple. Black paper clipped onto a holder .. you know the back part of the frame that holds the photos up. I put Christmas paper under the photo glass, and used an old cube light and flashlight to set up a couple of dramatic shots of a gnome. I didn't keep the one with the gift, it was not quite what I wanted.

But I liked this one.

I took out my wooden critters that were given to me by a childhood friend and tried two lights. I am fond of the deer and the dachshund so I chose them. I guess they could be brighter, but that was my effort for the day as I am learning quite a bit with this method and making many mistakes.

I got fancy by adding Christmas paper to the back and under the glass for the next shot which worked much better since I wasn't going for the dark mystical look.

I just kept adding and subtracting things to see how they worked. It was quite fun.

I got so busy trying out new things that I just kept making a bigger and bigger mess on my work table that is also housing the Christmas Village


I eventually put everything in its place and set the Village back up then got distracted by creating a new scene about the goings on in the Christmas Village.

It took me a good hour to tidy everything up because I kept stopping to think of something else I could try.

And so I did. My friend Pat gave me this beautiful ribbon she'd made to put on a wreath. I didn't put it on a wreath, I studied it with my camera with whites, high key, and other trials and methods.

I finally settled on this.

I liked the word peace showing up twice in this shot. And felt it was appropriate for right now.

It was a busy day for me. Cleaning house, running warm water out to Little Richard, getting distracted, and studying more videos regarding lights and still life.

As if you haven't guessed, this time of year is my favorite for playing with beautiful and cheerful colors and of course the characters I've acquired for years.

I'd given up the idea of doing it this way until The Happy Whisk [Ivy] commented on how she did her DYI black backgrounds using the inverse square law and her flash -- I think I am correct on that.

I don't have a flash but am enjoying creating an 'invisible' or black background with camera settings and then using LED lights or a simple flashlight to highlight my image.

With another below below zero day, it looks like a fun day to try a shot on my wooden floor in the daylight and use nothing for the background and see what results I can have.

Light manipulation is insanely fun once learned.

I found a tutorial by Lee Hall on YT that finally explained things so I could 'get it'. 
How to get black background easy way for beginners.

I'm going to be checking out his mushroom photography later on so I can learn how to up my game in the forest when it is warmer. I love learning new things.

-15 F this morning. I think that is freaking cold even in Celcius!

Why Decorate?

Decorate or don't Decorate its a personal choice. 

For some it is a burden. The commercials flood the radio waves, the TVs, and every store shouts CHRISTMAS at every turn. For some it feels like Christmas has missed its intended purpose. Christmas is not a Currier and Ives Scene, it can sometimes be messy, it can sometimes be wonderful.

An elderly friend in the south, told me she gave up on decorating years ago.

Her life had changed significantly. Let's just say there were tragedies in her life.

Similarly, my mother decided a few years back that she wouldn't decorate anymore. She questioned the point of it and often mentioned her dislike for Christmas.

When I was young, my mother would decorate extravagantly. Outdoor lights, a real tree, delicate glass ornaments, and those large, colorful bulbs were all part of the tradition. We joyfully threw tinsel over the tree. After we stopped believing in Santa Claus, she would pile gifts under the tree as she accumulated them.... which brought us immense excitement.

As we grew older, she opted for a tabletop tree to avoid the mess of fallen needles and the need for watering. It was neater and more convenient.

Children grow up and sometimes move away. Life unfolds in unexpected ways.

Christmas occurs during the darkest time of the year, often intensifying feelings of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). The darkness, the family memories, whether joyful or painful, are very real.

Isolation is a reality for many, as are sad and enduring memories.

My mother-in-law, however, never ceased her Christmas decorating. Post-Thanksgiving, I would help her retrieve decorations from storage. She would supervise from her chair as I replaced fall decorations with Christmas ones, set up the pre-lit tree, decorated her balcony, and arranged fairy lights, a wooden goose, and her miniature village.

Her apartment would transform into a festive haven, complete with a 'feather' tree and vintage ornaments. You couldn't even reach for toilet paper without seeing a Yuletide decoration.

When my husband and I first met, he expressed his dislike for Christmas. He didn't want me to decorate. He'd spent a Christmas in Vietnam and it was not a happy time for him at all.

That didn't stop me. I first started out with his tiny 6" tree. 

Eventually, it wasn't about Christmas so much as I wanted to light up the dark cold nights with colors and a sense of warmth. It was also a chance to deep clean the house and move stuff around. 

The Christmas season became a reason to have fun to...

Display toys and let the toys play.
Decorate the dog.
Take photos.
Be surprised, take joy in imagination...

I do it for me as generally I am the only audience for my decorating. It is like creating art that keeps transforming.

At least I have a reason now to 'play'. 

If I can make December playful with the cold days and dark nights, I'm happy. After all. No one who knows me thinks it is weird when I turn the living room into a place of play.
The toys take over as they should.

It even makes Grumpy Gus smile when he walks into the room and sees Teddy Bears doing naughty things one day and the next they are sitting quietly looking sheepish.

Decorating or making the decision not to is just fine. We can be moved to do it or not.

It is such a personal preference.

For many, Christmas can be a source of stress. I often spend Christmas Eve thinking about all the times I'd call my Father late on Christmas Eve. He'd ask me to describe our Christmas Tree. I'd tell him about it and sip a glass of wine. We'd laugh, we'd chat and I'd sit in the dark and tell him tall tales and he would do likewise.

For that, I am grateful for Christmas and the memories it brings to me each year.

This year I have 3 ugly chairs to consider for the Christmas Tree Chair. Which one will it be??

Christmas Chair and other things

This year's version
of the Christmas 

Chair

There is no partial tree with it this year. Just the chair in an ever changing environment. I liked how the shower curtian on the windows behind the tree changes the whole feeling and visual of the chair and baskets.

Here is the full living room.

The Honorable jointed Christmas Bear gets to sometimes sit in the chair.

I made him in the late 1980's. So he is an oldy but goodie. The one thing I do enjoy is making stuffed toys. For the life of me I cannot sew a shirt or pants. But give me a complicated toy and I can get it done. I haven't done any in a long time because I simply don't have the space.

Sometimes the chair is host to other things.

It is ever changing. I do something different to it nearly every day.

Around the house I have the usual.

The Elf on the Shelf has been hanging around. I haven't seen him disrupt anything yet. I have to also keep an eye out on my tiny jointed button bears. They like mischief also. I'm sure they will show up.

For me decorating for Christmas has become a way of having fun and thinking outside of the traditional Christmas 'Box'. Instead of one big glorious tree, I like to have little scenes that might sometimes lead the viewer to think of a story.

I want it to be fluid and ever changing. 

It may be more about being able to use my creativity than any holiday. After all, I get to mess with lights and all sorts of decorations...for about a month!

As kids we used to do 'set ups'. Sometimes it was with my brother's awesome train set and little soldiers -- sometimes those soldiers got run over by the train and we got enjoy wonderful derailments.

Other times we'd set up immense battlefields on the ping pong table in the basement. My brother is and always was a history buff with particular interests in large battles. We enjoyed our set ups.

So I continue. I love making small 'dioramas' and changing them. This time of the year is perfect for that.

Photo from when we were kids. Dad may have taken it and it is blurry, but there are the Legos and it looks like Civil War soldiers. This looks like one of my brothers big battles.
Such fond memories of play like this. 

Maybe that is why I continue to this day.

The Chair and Creative Play

When I get into the Christmas/Holidays Funk, I read what I wrote last year which was a Satirical Holiday get together for a family much like mine called Unrealistic Expectations totally made up!

I can't help but chuckle when I read it. 

In 2013 I used an old chair combined with a partial Christmas Tree in order to decorate our tiny cottage. This was before the remodel in 2016. The first time I took photos of it was in 2014 when I did it a second time. 

Even a small fake tree just took up too much room in our home. I improvised and found that it was much more fun doing something out of the norm.

This year I am changing things up a bit again. I have to admit that each year when I decorate an old chair it ends up being quite fun and never the same two times in a row. That is probably a good thing for me. The chair gives me a flat spot to continuously change up what is going on. I can walk by it and take a tiny Santa Claus and have him conversing with a dinosaur or perhaps a unicorn.

That old table that I brought in from the porch turned into a Legoland Table. Why not? Rich and I had so much fun over the past month or so building these 3 D puzzles that I decided to use them much like others would use a collection of Christmas Village houses.

The Wood Cabin build was really tough and very detailed.

The Lego Lady Contractor
shows off the Cabin Kitchen

Some of the build was extremely frustrating as the lights and wires really were difficult to work with. We found that we were missing a few pieces and the quality control was sucky at times. 

However, if I hadn't built previous Lego 'Expert' builds [The Gingerbread House], I would have given up. The roof bows and won't fit tight...but I learned a lesson. Lego Bricks Rule. I will probably dismantle parts and re make the house eventually.

The Sasquatch Family has no issues with it at all. They love it. They celebrated Thanksgiving in it before the roof was attached!

The Happy Sasquatch Family

They were so pleased when they got moved into the Lego Village.

Then the serious stuff started. Ol' Man Rich decided to take his ornament Champion Cruiser and find some Christmas Trees.

[When I told Rich that this Lego Person was him, he actually started to enjoy it. He really digs this car ornament and even pushed it around the kitchen table. He checks on what the Ol' Man Rich is doing each day. He denies enjoying it of course. But the smile on his face tells me otherwise.]

And by golly he did! He talked other friends into hauling them to the village!

Even the strange snowperson and the Polar Bears were pleased....

Having Christmas Trees in the Village would be awesome!

And every one rejoiced. I think the Lego

lady with the hair in a bun

was imbibing a bit too much?

Oh it looks like silly play doesn't it? Wasted time. But think about it. When a person decorates for any Holiday they are using their brain to create something beautiful, right? Create. That is play.

When a person knits or crochets, paints, draws, photographs, or does anything creative...they are playing. It keeps their minds active and engaged.

Play is good for the mind and soul.

Now.

If I can only think of cooking and baking as Creative Play. 

meh....

Igloo and Creepy Zombie Clay snow people...

Sometimes I get a bit carried away with things. I touched up the igloo for my table with the little mini snow men [they are 1/2" tall] and Santa. I thought, hey why not make a tiny 'snow scene'? You know, that diorama thingy?

As kids, we didn't use big words like diorama. We just made 'set ups'. 
Setups included our plastic soldiers having an epic battle on the ping pong table in the basement.

We spent hours doing those activities.

I used cotton balls that were packed in a medication bottle to make white snow boulders. The tiny gift boxes are something I picked up so many years ago and have reused year after year. 

I should have left well enough alone. I went out in the yard and picked up some fallen branches and broke off tiny trees. I thought I'd make a couple of snow men/people. Why not? I had the tips of the branches to make arms. I found itty bitty seeds to make the eyes in the first snow man zombie. Well, the rest is history.

They look like zombies! Terrifying indeed! 

Yet, somehow I like them.
They look less scary in the daylight. I still used black and white for them and gave the little snowperson without the mouth an acorn hat.

The igloo is behind them. 

Do not fear. I am not all creepy and scary. I like cute also. 

Behold the arrival of the Polar Bears!

They are adorable!

Making a righteous mess!

I always start out with a big mess in a tiny room. There are two huge bins of stuff and each year I sort it and try to do something different.

The snow men are a new addition to my collection of 'stuff'. I have no idea what the dragon is doing there, however she seems to be looking at the tipsy snow man that has the Jack Daniels bottle. Obviously the other snow men think it is funny. 

Santa looks peeved.

The mess is starting to come alive. I stopped there and quit for a while. I had no idea what I wanted to do.

Charlie as usual decided to help. He spotted the bigger snowmen in the box and thought perhaps I should give them to him as chew toys. To his credit, he left them alone.

Another start and stop. I decided the snowmen and polar bears should have a igloo. I covered a gourd with foil for a shape and used Sculpey Air Dry Clay to make an igloo.

It is still drying! 

Talk about doing stuff on the fly. However. I'm never really in a big rush for getting things decorated. 

We almost never have any guests even pre pandemic so basically this is just for my enjoyment. I say my because I think hubby just tolerates my antics. He smiles and says It looks nice when I ask his opinion. 

I do a lot of experimenting and a lot of re-arranging. I'll set something up and after a week, I'll change it. I need to keep things interesting.

So I leave it here, with my fairly ugly mess of things. The igloo was finished today.

I see that the Elf on the Shelf decided to get in on things.

I don't think his choice of partners was a wise one....

But he doesn't look too worried!

Please feed the dinosaurs before working with them!