This years Christmas card (one of many drafts I'm sure)

[Trevor Ash]

I'm helping my Mom make her Christmas cards this year. Her original idea was to have a photo taken of the outside front of the house with the family standing on the front porch and Christmas lights in the background. I told her I'd love to take on the project and do the photography, computer work, etc. She was happy to have me help

Well, she has this huge wreath which she personally made that hangs over her fireplace (she's a "crafty" mother). It didn't take more than a few days for me to realize that it would make the perfect photo for a Christmas card.

I told her my idea and took a few quick photos so that she could see what I was after. She was thrilled with the idea because she loves her wreath and others in the family like to make fun of it because it's such a pain for my Dad to hang!!! I think it's about 4 feet wide....anyhoo...

The only problem I had to solve was how to decorate the mantle. What you see here is a combination of ideas and refinements. It's taken me at least an hour of placement and replacement until things finally came together.

Originally, the idea was to have the candles in the candle holders lit as well but it turns out that doing that was just too much going on and it distracted from the wreath far too much.

The photo you see here is a composite of a couple photos so that I could retain as much detail in the wreath as possible. It's been fairly well edited across the board but the general mood (warmth) it portrays was all part of the vision. Even the light colored background (which is roughly the color of the card stock) is taken into account.

I'm EXTREMELY happy with the work I've done but still have to make prints. We'll be printing these a little smaller than 4x6 and pasting the photos to the card stock. A message will be written on the inside of the card.

Okay, sorry to take so much of your time! I'm just happy with my results so far. Depenind on how the prints turn out and the paper matching there's bound to be a few more "digital" refinements until it's completely done.