Better Late Than Never

Although we're both Methodist, my wife has a large contingent of Jewish friends stretching all the way back to her childhood. Some have passed on and others have scattered to the four winds as they've pursued their own lives. She tries to honor them all every season by the lighting of the menorah during Hanukkah. Now Hanukkah for 2011 started 20 December and ended 28 December. My wife couldn't find the menorah this year (we've been doing a lot of work inside the house and items, well, just got shifted around) and so this year we missed those dates.

As luck would have it she finally found it today along with the candles from several seasons past, and decided to just light them all today. On 2 January. She felt it was close enough to Hanukkah and within the classic twelve days of Christmas that she could at least light them all at once, this once. Again in her friends memory, here and beyond.

I loved the way it looked with the candles in the foreground and our Christmas tree in the background. I used the E-P2 and the M.Zuiko 45mm to photograph the menorah. I'd like to note that the lens was stopped down to f/2. I've decided, from personal use, to use both the 45mm and the Panasonic 20mm at nothing faster than f/2. We're only talking a 1/3 stop here, and in my not so humble opinion both lenses perform better at f/2 than wide open, yet give me enough speed for low lighting situations. For post processing in Lightroom I dropped the exposure by -1 and pushed recovery 100%, primarily to enhance the lower blue portion of all the candle flames.