Of all the photos we took this Christmas, this one is my favourite.
On December 1st, Daphne and I had spent a fun hour together in the kitchen, making this year’s gingerbread house and decorating it with sugar paste, skittles and this weird fake snow that I picked up for her in Hong Kong. The black stuff on the chimney is the excess melted sugar which we used to glue the pieces together. That stuff is hard to control!
She loved it all, especially the fake snow. Daph is pictured in her bedroom, by the window (it was a rainy day), sprinkling the snow which she arranged to surround our gingerbread house. I composed so as to get her normal clutter of toys out of the frame 
The photo took four or five exposures to get the lighting right. It was lit by bouncing the strobe off her wall (which is wallpapered a golden yellow, so it always gives a lovely warm light when used as a bounce) and back towards her face. The positioning of the wireless flash unit had to illuminate my favourite model while not reflecting off the window panes. We exposed at 1/60 and f/5. In retrospect, the aperture isn’t set so well (it would have been nice to get the house into tight focus, along with her face), but as always, live and learn!
We finally broke the gingerbread house up on December 30th. We put all the pieces into a plastic food box where they may well stay until next Christmas!
by Simon
