Dark winter nights

The winter nights seem a lot less cold and dark when you have a roaring log fire to keep you warm.

I’ve made a little resolution about capturing more of our everyday moments rather than just setting up ‘proper’ photo shoots. I have learnt a lot of technical skills during this photography journey of mine and now I want to slow down a little and aim to tell a story through the photos I take. I was looking back over the thousands of photos I took in 2011 and my favourite ones were consistently ones that weren’t my best technical images. Instead they were the photos that meant something to me as they captured a moment I wanted to remember, or just made me smile as I looked at them and remembered what was happening when I clicked the shutter.

This was the first time Theo showed a real interest in the log fire and that to me was one of those everyday but important moment I wanted to preserve. The only light in the room was coming from the fire and if I had used flash I would have killed the atmosphere of the image. Instead I opted to use my Fuji x100 point and shoot camera as the lightness of the camera meant I could use a slow shutter speed with less risk of camera shake. In fact I went as low as 1/15 second in the first photo! As I have my Fuji set to aperture priority mode I needed to trick the camera into a correct exposure as otherwise the camera would try to even out the bright and dark areas of the image and that wouldn’t give me the dramatic shadows I wanted. To do this I first pointed my camera focus point at the bright flames and held down the exposure lock button, then I swung the camera back towards Theo and whilst still holding down exposure lock I then locked my focus point on Theo’s face. Finally I recomposed my photo into the composition I wanted and clicked the shutter.