Balls

R and I spotted these huge decorations - which look more like witch balls than Christmas baubles - in the antiques centre where we bought our side tables, and which also does good Christmas. They had even bigger ones, but we thought those might be - ahem - slightly over the top. Last weekend we began the process of trying to fit these into our sparkly scheme; I like this positioning rather more than R does, but that's because my motto when it comes to Christmas is Nothing Succeeds Like Excess.

I spent this morning alternately attempting to retrieve my study from under mounds of paper, various, and researching A3 photo printers. Which reminds me to tell you that I won the Beginners section of the Colour Panel competition at BGCC last night, with this panel. I was very pleased - and a little surprised - and then very quickly quite irritated with myself that I had only submitted to one of the four competitions, when I know I also have stuff that would have worked for Mono, Creative and Nature. Part of the issue is that I have to send my files to someone else for printing and mounting, which adds an extra layer of needing to get myself organised in good time; and which is why I'm starting to move towards the idea of printing my own images. Decent A3 printers are, of course, horribly expensive - so if anyone owns one that they're happy to recommend, I'd love to hear your views.

By the middle of the afternoon I'd shuffled enough paper to find my desk and most of my study carpet, and was feeling skittish; so I celebrated by lying on my back on the flagged base of the tower and shooting wide-angle up the staircase. The light in the tower was very poor by then, so I used our little LED studio lights down below, and the stair lantern up above - which created a very weird white balance effect. After much fartnarkling, I came to the conclusion that the whole thing looked better in mono, with a slight split tone.

I then discovered that by a happy chance today's Wide Angle Wednesday challenge has the theme Festive, so I'll happily submit this shot for Bob's consideration, along with these. I'm amused to notice that from this angle, the stair lantern looks a little like a snowflake.