The unexpected sometimes is what you were looking for.  I had to work from home (for various reasons) and was able to fit in a little camera work throughout the day.  My original plan was to use a picture of one of our ornaments on the tree.  I had a few to pick from but nothing was standing out as the obvious choice.

Sitting in the big comfy chair in the living I noticed the lamp across the room from me with its slightly ornate neck and the shadow it created on the wall.  I snapped off a few pictures testing various exposure settings.  The big reason the lamp turned into my picture for the project has just as much to do with what I learned in processing the picture.  I have taken many pictures at higher ISO settings in low lighting inside but never managed to remove the induced noise especially within the lighter colors.  It all came together when I was working on this picture…  now I have another tool in my bag of tricks.

Toward the end of the day I was trying different angles and compositions on various decorations around the room when one of the pictures had a portion of two candle holders with some great effects from the flash.  I quickly moved a few decorations out of my way to create this picture.

I still had those ornament pictures I had taken throughout the day.  This one just brought our tree together in one image…  Disney, homemade and yearly ornaments for the kids.  Plus who can argue with ‘red ornaments on a green Christmas tree…’?

Well, my plan to be more thoughtful about my picture selection fell through for today.  Hopefully I can make it work going forward, but I’m not going to worry about.  The pictures tend to jump out at me anyway…