Snowpocalypse!

I got my camera out a few days ago and was determined to take some winter photos.  I wanted to just experiment with settings on my camera and see what I came up with.

First, I set up my DSLR on a tripod inside the house, but opened the back door so that I could see out of it but not get my camera all wet in the snow.  Then I, opened up my aperture as wide as it would go because it is dark outside and I need all the help I could get!  I then played around with longer shutter speeds and higher ISOs (I would make the shutter open longer, so I could decrease the ISO, and so on) and then I figured I would see which expsoure I liked the best later.

Turns out I liked this one the best because of the way the snow was angled and the right amount of snow lines (as you leave your shutter open longer, the snow streaks get bigger).  Here are the settings for this image: f/2.8, .6 shutter, ISO 1600, 24-70mm

For this next image, I was taking some boring shots of my Christmas tree and instead decided to try the effect you see a lot around winter time where the lights are really out of focus and they turn into big circles.  I turned off all of the other lights in my house except the tree, and played around a bit until I got this image (settings were f/2.8 .5 shutter ISO 100 24-70mm):