Month #32 - Retrospective of Daily Photos posted from 5/04 to 12/09 (most viewers for the month)

When winter sets in I often tried my hand at indoor projects. This time it was still life's with a holiday theme. This one took lots of fiddling and playing around to get what I was looking for. Here's what I wrote back in 12/06 -

12/3/06 - Holiday Reflections - 2
OK - after several passes at this scene over the past week, it's time to quit and give the glass top dining room table back to my wife to use for the holiday open house.
I kept trying to envision elements to add to the original version of this as shown in my PAD about a week ago. I bought various little holiday items and tried them but never got anything that was like my original vision - Santa and a sleigh. I looked through several stores to find a sleigh with no luck. Finally - downloaded some clipart, printed it on my trusty inkjet and pasted it to the black backdrop. Worked just fine and fits with some of my future studio and special effects photography ideas that involve paper models and cutouts.

Setup - black backdrop; glass top dining room table with a black cloth taped to the bottom of the table top; 12 boxes each of a different size ranging from about 10" to 3"; Santa & reindeer pasted to the backdrop (created by downloading clip art from the web & printing it); two Nikon SB800 speedlights sitting on top of the nearest boxes on either side of the camera; 18mm lens on a tripod located between the front edges of the two nearest boxes; manual focus to get the nearest boxes sharp (the far end is sharp since it's only about 5 feet away with an f16 aperture setting) - mix well and serve while warm.