Holiday Gift Guide: String Lights for Starbursts

Today’s Post by Mildred Alpern

Twinkle twinkle little star...

Here is a fun inexpensive gift with lots of imaginative uses that I bought through Amazon:

String Lights , Oak Leaf 2 Set of Micro 30 LEDs Super Bright Warm White Color Wire Rope Lights Battery Operated on 9.8 Ft Long Copper Color Ultra Thin String Copper Wire for $6.99.

Intrigued by starbursts, I wanted to practice with lights and experiment in a darkened room on my subject, a toy carousel.

Then I “played” with the LED lights. I wrapped the wire of one set around the toy carousel and set my camera on a tripod for the “night” shot in my apartment. I used a remote shutter release to avoid any vibration. I wanted the starbursts and got them with a high f/stop setting shooting in Aperture Preferred mode. However, the copper wire was visible and not to my liking, so I converted the image to black and white, erased the wires in Photoshop and randomly painted in brown color.

The carousel image was shot with Olympus E-M5 and the Leica DG Summilux 25mm f/1.4 ASPH lens with an exposure of 60 sec at f/14, -1EV, ISO 400.