Not all of my photography requires travel. About this time last year I shot an assignment for Sunflower Publishing that didn’t need much more than a 10 minute drive. Oh, and waiting for that perfect evening. That’s the hard part about local shoots — it’s easy to keep putting them off, thinking that tomorrow might offer a better sky, a little snow, or less wind.
On this occasion I was shooting the downtown holiday lighting in my own hometown of Lawrence, Kansas. We have a great little main street and a very photogenic courthouse so all that was needed to make it “just right” was a little bit of snow. It worked out pretty well, and I like the shot they chose for the editor’s letter page:
For those curious about the photographic details, the above was shot on a Nikon D810 with a manual focus Rokinon 85mm lens — f/2.0, 1/400th of a second at ISO 200.
I chose the 85 because it has very nice bokeh — meaning that the out-of-focus areas are really smooth and creamy. By getting some lights in the foreground, achieved by shooting through a tree across the street from the courthouse, I could turn those tiny tree lights into big balls of out-of-focus color.
Here are some more images from that night:
