Dorothy Does Puzzle.

Available light. Single frame DV image. Hand-held. December 1998.

If you discount the Christmas tree lights and the natural lighting out the window, this is a one-light shot, always a challenge for photographers. The table lamp's proximity to the light-coloured tabletop results in extreme overexposure of the puzzle, yet the bounce from it provides a soft even keylight for Dorothy. The best lighting setups are always the simplest.

This image is a textbook example of colour temperature. Outside, the colour temperature is probably 10,000 degrees Kelvin. The table light is about 2700 degrees. Somehow, Sony's camera sees it all. I used manual white balance, preset for the tungsten setting.

The image is quite noisy, especially in the snowy areas outside. To conceal this and to add drama, I darkened the noisy areas in the lower foreground and on the right and left extremes with Photoshop.