The Making of a Christmas Card

 

 

Yesterday I posted my Christmas card picture and explained that my guinea pigs cannot be together because they fight. Today I will share more of the pictures I took and show the making of my Christmas card.

The set up:

set up

 

I had my camera on a tripod so I could prevent as little movement as possible so the frame would line up. I used a roll of fabric snow set up on the dinner table with a box behind to create the background. The dinning room does not have the best lighting, but I do not own any photography lights and it would not have made much of a difference anywhere else in the house.

The clothing and props:

prps

We had to get the cards made in order to be printed in time to mail, so I did not have time to make a more elaborate or interesting scene. I took two snowmen off my bookshelf and arranged the two sleds with stuffed Christmas guinea pigs next to them.  The wicker sleds I got when I was a kid, and the stuffed guinea pigs were gifts last Christmas.

The hat is a Yankee Candle jar candle topper accessory, so it has no strap. It is the smaller hat in this picture:

ycc_santa_hat_and_pants_small

The holiday cape and bandana came from Petsmart, and are Life’s Fur-tas-tic! brand. The bandana ended up being too small to fit, so it was not used.

Each guinea pig wore the one hat and dress individual and I took a few different pictures hoping to get something useful.

Cola’s individual pictures:

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Fizz’s individual pictures:

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Then after picking out the best pictures, photoshop’s magic put them together (and removed red eye):cropsantahats

Lion Photos

Sorry for the lack of recent posts, I just got back from vacation.

Animal Planet has a great article about special cameras that can be used remotely to take pictures of wildlife.  The Beetlecam is a remote controlled buggy that has a DSLR camera attached to it created by two brothers, Will and Matt.

Here are two of the cameras:

(William Burrard-Lucas)

The creators of the camera wanted to take amazing pictures of African wildlife, specifically lions. Here are some of the pictures that they were able to capture with their modified cameras:

Up close and personal:

(William Burrard-Lucas)

Male Lion

(William Burrard-Lucas)

Cubs

(William Burrard-Lucas)

Lion chewing on the reinforced BeetleCam

(William Burrard-Lucas)

You can read the full article from Animal Planet here, and can see the full galleries of pictures from the BeetleCam Project here.

Wonderful Wildlife Photography

The 2010 Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition is open and receiving entries.

This is the 46th year of the competition which is owned by the UK Natural History Museum and the BBC Wildlife Magazine.  This is a contest which wildlife photographers aspire to enter and win. The competition features an adult and youth competition. If you take wonderful wildlife photos, consider entering the contest.

Here are some of the best images from the 2009 competition:

Young Overall Winner: Clash of the Yellowhammers by Fergus Gill

11 to 14 year old Highly Commended: Snow Bath by Sander Brostrom

Winner for Animal Behavior – Mammals: Boto Water Polo by Kevin Schafer

A Runner- Up in the same category: Hare Spat by Morten Hilmer

Urban and Garden Wildlife Winner: Respect by Igor Shpilenok

Highly Commended in Nature in Black and White: Lone Lion by Britta Jaschinski