The holiday season is a time filled with warmth, joy, and the magic of cherished traditions. As families come together to celebrate Christmas, there’s a unique opportunity to capture these special moments through photography. One timeless tradition that holds a special place in many households is the act of leaving cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve. Let’s explore the art of documenting this heartwarming tradition and offer tips on how to create lasting memories through your lens.

Setting the scene

Start by setting the stage for your photo session. Decorate the table with festive tablecloths, arrange Christmas-themed plates and cups, and place a tray of delicious cookies front and center. Consider adding a few holiday decorations like ornaments, twinkling lights, and perhaps even a handwritten note to Santa from the children.

Capture the baking

If your family, especially with children love to bake, capture the fun right from the start. Capture the process of making and baking the cookies too. Or get together with a few friends and make batches of holiday cookies, while sharing some holiday cheer.

Candid moments

Capture the candid moments that unfold as your family engages in the cookie-setting ritual. Document the excitement and anticipation on the faces of the children as they carefully arrange the cookies and pour a glass of milk for Santa. These unposed, authentic moments will become treasured memories that you can look back on for years to come.

Close-ups and details

Zoom in on the little details that make this tradition so special. Capture the kids’ small hands as they arrange the cookies, the crumbs left behind, and the handwritten note expressing gratitude to Santa. These close-ups add a personal touch to your documentation, preserving the essence of the moment.

Play with lighting

Experiment with lighting to create a warm and inviting atmosphere. If possible, use natural light streaming in from a nearby window to enhance the cozy, festive ambience. Soft, diffused lighting can add a touch of magic to your photographs, accentuating the joy of the occasion.

Include everyone

Make sure to include all family members in the documentation process. Whether it’s grandparents, parents, or siblings, everyone contributes to the magic of Christmas. Capture the interactions and shared smiles as each person plays a role in setting up the cookies for Santa.

Print and share

Once you’ve curated a collection of beautiful images, consider printing them to create a physical album or holiday card. Share these tangible memories with friends and family, or use them to adorn your home during the festive season.

Photographing and documenting family Christmas traditions, such as leaving cookies for Santa, is a wonderful way to create lasting memories. By paying attention to the details, capturing candid moments, and embracing the magic of the season, you can preserve the warmth and joy of these special traditions for generations to come. So, grab your camera, immerse yourself in the holiday spirit, and start capturing the magic of Christmas in your home.

So what’s your favorite Christmas Tradition? And what do you leave out for Old Saint Nick? Many regions and countries have different traditions. Share what’s yours in photos!

Introduction

Ease of Use

The Sigma 70-200mm F2.8 DG DN OS Sports is an impressively compact and lightweight zoom lens, measuring 20cms / 8.1in. in length and weighing in at 1335g / 47.1oz.

This includes the removable tripod collar/socket, yet it still manages to maintain a constant aperture of F2.8 throughout the entire zoom range.

This makes it the one of the most compact 70-200mm zooms in its class, when assessed as an AF compatible, F2.8 constant aperture zoom lenses for 35mm full-frame sensor cameras

It is shorter and much lighter than the comparable 70-200mm f/2.8 DG OS HSM Sports DSLR version that we tested back in 2019.

This is a lens that you can easily hand-hold for a long time, with no real need for it to be mounted on a tripod or monopod.

As demonstrated by the product images, it’s a great match even for a relatively small camera like the Sony A7C II that we tested it with, where it feels well balanced.

While you can use it on a smaller APS-C body, it won’t balance very well at all (and the focal length will also change).

Build quality is excellent given the affordable price tag. The lens has a plastic shell with a mixture of metallic magnesium parts and a compound material, TSC (Thermally Stable Composite), used inside.

It also incorporates a brass bayonet mount that’s supposed to be more durable than a normal metal mount. The optical elements are made of high-grade glass.

The Sigma 70-200mm F2.8 DG DN OS Sports feels solid enough in your hand, despite its mostly polycarbonate construction.

The zoom ring is generously wide and it has a tactile ridged, rubberised grip band with a smooth action.

Thanks to its inner zoom design, the lens does not extend at all when fully zoomed out to 200mm, maintaining a constant length.

The focusing ring is on the narrower side and is located towards the center of the lens mount. There’s no distance scale and no depth of field scale on this lens.

There are no hard stops at either ends of the range, either, making it harder to set focus at infinity. Pol ariser users should be pleased that the 77mm filter thread doesn’t rotate on focus.

In terms of features, the Sigma 70-200mm F2.8 DG DN OS Sports offers everything that you need from a professional telephoto zoom lens.

This very usefully includes built-in Vibration Reduction, activated by the OS switch on the lens barrel, which offers up to 7.5 stops of compensation. The OS system has two modes – mode 1 is suitable for general photography, and mode 2 is best for panning shots of moving subjects.

The 70-200mm F2.8 DG DN OS Sports lens features a traditional aperture ring for the first ever time on a Sigma zoom.

It has 1/3EV stops ranging from f/2.8 to f/22 and an Auto setting if you prefer to set the aperture via the camera body.

There’s also a Lock switch which either locks the aperture ring to Auto or to the aperture values, and a Click switch that lets you de-click it for silent operation during movie recording.

An AF/MF switch on the side of the lens makes it easy to switch between the two focusing systems.

In use, we found the focusing system to be quiet, fast and reliable with the lens mounted on a Sony A7C II camera. It’s also a very quiet performer, thanks to the newly developed built-in dual High-response Linear Actuator motors, making it well-suited to video recording, especially as it has also been designed to suppress focus breathing.

Focusing is usefully internal and manual focusing is possible when set via the Focus switch on the lens barrel. Full-time manual focus override is also available by using the Direct Manual Focus (DMF) function on Sony cameras and then rotating the focus ring.

There is a focus limiter switch which has three settings, Full, 3m-infinity and closest focus distance-3m, which helps speed up the auto-focusing if you know how far your subject is from the lens. You can also use the Sigma USB dock to customise these ranges to your own needs.

There are three dedicated Auto Focus Lock (AFL) buttons located between the zoom and focus rings that can be optionally re-configured to assign various functions to the lens barrel and there is also a Custom Mode switch with two available modes.

The lens has a dust and splash-proof construction with a water and oil repellent front coating that should help it to withstand most inclement conditions.

The tripod collar has a locking knob that allows the lens and camera to rotate freely to position them horizontally or vertically. The magnesium tripod socket (TS-151) has a 1/4″ screw hole and is Arca Swiss compatible.

The lens is supplied with plastic lens caps, a carbon-fibre reinforced plastic circular cover-type lens hood (LH860-01) with a locking mechanism, and a good quality padded case. The filter size is 77mm.

Note that this lens is not compatible with Sony’s 1.4x and 2x teleconverters and Sigma don’t provide their own TCs for the E-mount system.

Sigma’s very useful USB dock isn’t available either for the Sony system, and this lens isn’t compatible with the very fastest burst shooting rates that cameras like the Alpha 1 or A9 III offer.

Focal Range

At the 70mm focal length the angle of view is 34.3 degrees.

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At the 200mm focal length the angle of view is 12.3 degrees.

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Chromatic Aberrations

Chromatic aberrations, typically seen as purple or blue fringes along contrasty edges, are well controlled with this lens.

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Vignetting

With the Sigma 70-200mm F2.8 DG DN OS Sports wide open at f/2.8, you can see some noticeable light fall-off in the corners. Stopping down helps, although to completely get rid of this phenomenon, you will need to use an f-stop of at least f/5.6 or smaller.

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Distortion

There’s quite a lot of barrel and pin-cushion distortion evident in both the JPEG and RAW files which you’ll need to correct in post-processing until a suitable lens profile is released for your editing software.

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Sunstars and Flare

The Sigma 70-200mm F2.8 DG DN OS Sports produces quite nice sunstars when stopped-down to f/22, as shown below, although it it a little prone to flare when shooting directly into the sun.

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Macro

The close-focus point is 65cm / 25.6″ from the film/sensor plane at the 70mm focal length and 100cm / 39.37″ at 200mm. It has a maximum magnification ratio of 1:5.2 / 0.19x at the 200mm focal length.

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Bokeh

Bokeh is a word used for the out-of-focus areas of a photograph, and is usually described in qualitative terms, such as smooth / creamy / harsh etc.

One of the reason to buy such a fast lens as the Sigma 70-200mm F2.8 DG DN OS Sports is to be able to isolate the subject from the background.

Sigma have also used an iris diaphragm with 11 rounded blades for a very pleasing rendering of the out-of-focus highlights.

Below you’ll find some examples, but you are also encouraged to check out our sample images.

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Sharpness

In order to show you how sharp the Sigma 70-200mm F2.8 DG DN OS Sports lens is, we are providing 100% crops on the following pages.

Photographer Prince Gyasi drew upon his childhood sense of wonder growing up in Ghana to create the 2024 Pirelli calendar.

Photographed in Ghana and the U.K., the collection features prominent figures such as Idris Elba, Angela Bassett, Naomi Campbell, and others.

While promoting the project in New York, Gyasi discussed the influences that shaped this year’s theme, “Timeless.”

“I grew up in Ghana, born and raised there. So, if I’m telling any story, I’ll be narrating it from a Ghanaian perspective. However, I had access to a variety of influences, such as movies, music, and elements from different ethnicities, generations, and countries,” Gyasi explained.

For the project, Gyasi tapped into his inner child, emphasizing the need to be childlike to generate imaginative ideas and access memories.

Using colour as a motif, he selected individuals who had inspired him throughout his life, including poet Amanda Gorman, writer Margot Lee Shetterly, and filmmaker and recording artist Jeymes Samuel.

As the director of the award-winning film “The Harder They Fall,” Samuel found himself on the “other side” of the creative process.

“Usually, I’m the person telling the story, working with a vast array of talent, directing, and guiding everyone. So, it was truly liberating to surrender oneself to the vision, to someone else’s story,” Samuel expressed.

Shetterly, the author of “Hidden Figures,” described her time in front of the camera as a thought-provoking learning experience.

The Pirelli Calendar, first published in 1964, has since gained renown for its high-art aesthetic and captivating shots of the world’s foremost stars.

For previous generations older than me, several fashion photographers probably inspired them. And while I acknowledge that they’ve done the same to me, I also follow different photographers. For me, no one’s work has quite hit me in the heart like Scott Schuman — otherwise known as the Sartorialist. In fact, his work consistently comes to me at times when I’m lacking creativity and simply want more of it. As an American Desi realizing that I can truly reclaim parts of my culture and flaunt them against traditional American menswear, the photography in The Sartorialist India reminds me that I never need to conform both in how I dress, and how we approach street photography.

The book is a massive tome of photography that you can page through endlessly as you sit in your office or at a kitchen table. And for $65, it’s a gift that keeps on giving year after year.

When you crack open the book, you’re treated to a bit of an introduction and then get immediately into the images. You’ve probably seen some of these on Scott’s website or even his Instagram. But several others are ones that I’ve never seen before — and I’ve spent lots of time on Scott’s website researching and admiring the images for various reasons.

The paper feels fairly premium, and it’s a heavier stock than what you see from many other publishers. If you’re not used to holding prints, you’ll be surprised at this. Turning each page is a task in and of itself. That tells me from the design that the images and the book is meant for you to sit there and study — not just page through and scroll through like you’re going through an Instagram feed.

The pages are glossy. And because of this, you should truly experience the book without reflections. So I recommend looking at this by window light and slightly propping the book up to cut down on said reflections while providing the soft light that the book needs to give the images the beauty they hold true.

Most of the images take up a single page. Sometimes you’ll spot an image alongside another while at other times you’ll see an image right next to a giant white space. Rarely are landscape photos violating the cardinal sin of photography books — splitting the image down the middle of the fold. And I’m pretty happy about this, but I truly wish that it didn’t happen at all in the first place.

The Sartorialist India features tons of different people across the subcontinent. Scott showcases the lighter-skinned desi folks from the North as well as the darker ones from the South. Additionally, there are a few folks not natively from the area in the book that you’ll spot. It goes to show how diverse the country really is.

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Most of all, Scott does something that truly touches me. The images and overall presentations feels like National Geographic but far less like it’s from the colonial point of view. Instead, it’s admiring men’s and women’s fashion in here. Scott seems more like a collaborator and observer in the scene rather than a documenter. But in truth, he’s a documenter that also interacts with his subjects. The predecessors from Nat Geo did as well. However, there’s a kindness in Scott’s photos that I don’t often see anywhere else.

There’s no text in this book other than the introduction, and that’s a sad point for me. Scott rarely talks about his subjects as they are anymore in great depth. Originally on the blog, he had short stories about each person — especially when he lived in NYC. On his Instagram now, he doesn’t do this much from Milan. Here, there’s nothing more about each person, and that leaves me wanting more. However, I understand how it can be limiting with modern layouts.

Overall, I really like The Sartorialist India by Scott Schuman — and I think that any photographer that wants to get more into printed work should pick it up.

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Journal Reports: Year in Review

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How Is China’s Economy Doing? Not Nearly as Well as China Says It Is

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By Daniel H. Rosen

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December 6, 2023 at 3:00 PM ET

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2023 was supposed to be the year that China turned things around. Instead, the opposite happened.

A display at the ongoing India Photo Festival 2023 in Hyderabad aims at celebrating abilities and empowering the differently-abled. The exhibition has works of 20 finalists, including three winners of the second edition of the Global Ability Photography Challenge (GAPC), organised by Hyderabad-based Youth4Jobs in partnership with the Indian Photo Festival (IPF). While its first edition had a national representation, the second edition has global participation.

Youth4Jobs founder, Meera Shenoy, never dreamt about this kind of a response for the contest.’ “The best part was the participation of physically- and mentally-challenged people. The Right to Persons with Disabilities Act recognises 21 disabilities, of which 18 were represented here,” she says.

From across the globe

The 20 finalists were selected from 269 entries. The participants are from India, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Belgium, South Africa, Tuvalu and the US. Eight were chosen as winners and awarded cash prizes of ₹25,000 and ₹15,000 each at an event recently.

New York-based multidisciplinary photographer with disability Nolan Ryan Trower whose works are also being displayed was recently in Hyderabad for the award ceremony. “He was excited by the talent and told me it’s fascinating to see the works but also paradoxical that he should travel 6000 kilometres from the US to India to see a photography exhibition of people with disabilities, something he says, he rarely sees in the West,” says Meera.

To hone the skills

The Foundation had recently conducted photography camps in September and October in Rajasthan and Maharashtra. The vision is to develop the photography skills of people with disabilities in rural areas and help them learn to look at disability with a cheerful lens. “We tell them to take good pictures of what they see around them so that they look at the environment with special eyes and notice small things too. Our prize-winning photograph in the display has pictures of feet with disabilities but done creatively. This is a creative and fun way to look at disability rather than the sad manner in which society looks at it.”

A photograph by Deepanshi Sharma
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Special arrangement

This perspective change, Meera hopes will help one appreciate diversity. “The way we go ‘wow’ at seeing Nature and its different flowers and leaves, we learn to embrace a diverse community.”

Meera is happy with the response but feels much can be done. The award-winning pictures are also being displayed at an event at the Godrej Diversity and Inclusion Center in Mumbai on December 8. “The potential is tremendous; We hope this grows as a movement,” says Meera.

Three winners share their experiences

Magic in the ordinary

A photograph by Lavanujan Croos
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Special arrangement

Lavanujan Croos from Jaffna in Sri Lanka is a deaf photographer with a broad range of skills especially design and photography.  His first prize winning photograph titled ‘Young Girl’ has a little girl with a red flower gazing at a crowd during the chariot pulling festival in Nallur Kanthaswamy temple in Jaffna, Sri Lanka in August this year. “I framed the beauty of a young girl, dressed uniquely, her joy reflected as she gazed at the temple crowd. Guided by her father’s supportive hand, the photograph tells a story of happiness and connection,” says Lavanujan in an email. 

Lavanujan’s love for photography began in college. He  borrowed a friend’s camera and was fascinated to see the ‘way it froze moments in time’  His photography journey began after learning the basics of photography from Madras photoblogs Deaf photography and uses Canon EOS 700D but borrows lenses from relatives.

 “There’s magic in the ordinary; I want my photos to convey the stories that often go unnoticed,” says Lavanujan hoping to encourage aspiring photographers to embrace the journey and tell their stories. 

Capturing resilience 

By Akanksha Kamble
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Akanksha Kamble, a hearing-impaired individual from Mumbai has diverse talents and passions. An artist, content creator and an interior designer specialising in architecture, she is an adept photographer and film director too.  Her black and white image taken with an iPhone at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus in 2022 shows a group of village folks at the station.  “Their ease and comfort while sitting on the ground inspired me, echoing the enduring soul of India’s rural communities. I coined the concept for this photograph with the quote ‘The soul of India lives in its villages,” she says. 

Thanks to her partner Ashwin Babu, a passionate photographer from Mumbai, she too developed an interest in photography in 2019.  Witnessing people from villages with traditional practices effortlessly adapting within the urban landscape has been a profound inspiration for her. 

Appreciating the cultural richness and simplicity of moments, she says, “It’s remarkable to observe the resilience and authenticity of village life thriving amidst the bustling heart of the city.”

Capturing emotions

The third prize winner Gayatri Gupta has Down syndrome. An artist and advocate, she has been at the forefront in the world of art and disability advocacy. Her photograph taken during the COVID time with Canon 700D shows her mother with the background of clouds and leaning against a glassdoor. Gayatri had to practice taking pictures of the clouds as the balcony was covered by a pigeon net.  She looked at the shot and said, ‘I caught you trapped between the buildings and Covid’.  

Her love for photography developed into a passion eight years ago in Bangalore  and is currently doing online courses with her mentor, Mohit Ahuja.  “ I love taking portraits of people and capturing their emotions in different environments. These strangers ‘talk’ to me through photography even after many years,” says Gayatri adding, “My challenge is ‘scepticism I face when I start taking photos. Most people don’t take me seriously.” Gayatri’s artistic journey boasts numerous accolades, including being selected among 25 artists for a Chitra Kala Parishad showcase in March 2023.

The top 20 finalists’ photographs and Nolan Ryan Trowe’s works are on display till January 7, 2024, at the State Art Gallery in Kavuri Hills, Hyderabad.