Helen Stephenson's Christmas Light Pictures, Downderry Road, December 2006

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I read about the Ward's house in Downderry Road while reading one of the local online newspapers, and I noted the address down for a visit. Stephen and I finally got there quite late on Christmas Day, which turned out not to be a bad time, as there were hardly any others out that late and I was able to set my camera and tripod up without getting in anybody's way.

These pictures were captured using a Pentax *ist DS digital SLR camera.

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The decorations on the Downderry Road house cover the Wards' house and its three terraced neighbours, plus the other side of the access road leading to these houses.



	A nativity scene shares space with Santa in various guises.

	Trains figure quite prominently in the decorations.

			There were various other decorations hanging in the tree branches. I've picked out one of the balls here.

Moving on from the roadside to the houses, I enjoyed the display of items which weren't brightly lit - although a few bright lights couldn't help but creep into these pictures.





	Here we have a 4-frame animation of more items from the front of the house (I think dial-up users will be able to see this without waiting too long) and yet another train.

		I liked these decorations on the inside of a window.

Casting my eyes upwards, there was plenty more to see, starting with these decorations dominated by a snowman with a top hat.

	Here's Santa on his bicycle.

You may notice that the finish of the wall behind the next four pictures is pebbledash rendering rather than brickwork. That's because these decorations are on a neighbouring house in the terrace. When you looked at the ladder in real life, you only saw Santa at the top or the bottom at one time, but my shutter speed was slow enough that I caught two Santas!



There is a serious side to this display. The Wards are asking for donations which will be passed on to the Cystic Fibrosis Trust. Cystic Fibrosis is the UK's most common life-threatening inherited disease and any funds raised are going to a more than worthy cause.






For anyone who's interested in the technical details: I shot all of these with the sensitivity set to ISO 200 and the aperture set to f8 in aperture priority mode with the white balance set to tungsten. I reviewed on the back panel and bracketed by up to two stops under where I considered that I needed it. The lens used was my Sigma 28-300. I had to do some work in PhotoShop as many of the lights which I'm pretty sure were green (like Christmas trees!) were rendered as cyan. I don't know whether this was due to the white balance setting or the bulbs in use, as green objects which weren't lights came out as green. Anyway, a bit of adjustment to the cyan tones gave me back my greens without too much effort.