Christmas windows in Merrickville

[Manfred M]

Merrickville is a village that is about a 45 minute drive from where we live and they held their Christmas market yesterday. Many of the old houses that line the main street are now stores and as is common in this part of the world, the village has spruced itself up to draw tourists to the village. The village is on the Rideau Canal and people stop here at the Merrickville Lockstation to go through the lift locks with their boats.

All of the beautiful displays in the shop windows reminded me of the awe I had as a child wandering and looking into store windows at Christmas time. I've tried to capture that feeling in this series.

These are all night shots taken from the outside. The advantage is that there was minimal reflection and glare from shooting through the windows. The disadvantage was I had to hand-hold, so shot at ISO 6400 and a wide open aperture.


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[Shadowman]

Nice captures, looks like there was enough light inside that using high ISO didn't matter.

[Manfred M]

Nice captures, looks like there was enough light inside that using high ISO didn't matter.

I was pushing my luck, but I did apply noise reduction on raw import to minimize the noise in the final images.

[Donald]

I do think these are a wonderful set of images. The pictures through the windows make me believe there is a small child just out no camera shot with its nose pressed against the glass, all wrapped up in a warm coat.

[leprechaun]

Very nice series Manfred.
I am impressed with the sharpness and lack of noise for shooting at ISO6400.
Takes my back to the Christmas window displays in Eatons and Sears in downtown Toronto

[Lon Howard]

If you hadn't mentioned the ISO I would have never thought about it.

[Wavelength]

I can't stop enjoying them.... it is a great idea to shoot them from outside through a window

[rpcrowe]

These lovely images really portray the holiday spirit...

[Manfred M]

These lovely images really portray the holiday spirit...

I think I came away from the Christmas market with a slightly different opinion.

The underlying message was "Spend, spend, spend..."

Which is my main criticism on the modern world's view of Christmas. We seem to have gone "off-message" in dealing with what the Christmas celebration is supposed to be about.