Christmas Lights at Mormon Temple DC

I was reading an article in a photography magazine that made the point that you are the expert in your own region – you know where the best sites are, you can visit them when conditions are good and you don’t have to get back to your hotel or into the car for the next part of your vacation. Good advice and I took it yesterday to visit the Christmas lights at the Washington DC Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I arrived around 4pm before the lights were turned on, so I could get a range of images of the building and grounds – it was a bright day and the setting sun gave some great lighting to the building and grounds.

I spent the first hour just wandering around – they have no issues with tripods and so I was able to get really sharp and clear shots at ISO 100 for minimum noise. Here is one of the side entrance doors to the temple:

As it started to get dark, I was on the lookout for unusual views and thought this image of the reflection of the church in the windows of the visitors center with the statue in the background was something different:

Still on the prowl, I wanted to get a different view of the traditional nativity scene in the grounds:

In this case, I warmed up the colors in the camel head and did a composite in Photoshop of the warmer head against the blurred background of the stable scene. By this time, the lights were fully illuminated and I thought this one of the christmas tree lights reflected in broken ice of a small pond looked interesting as an abstract (another photographer had been breaking the ice to make a nicer foreground for his image of the church…).
Finally, this is the scene of the church from the visitor’s center with the pond (and broken ice) in the foreground:

I spent a couple of hours looking for both standard shots and interesting details – all in all an interesting trip!