Driskill Christmas Tree 2024 – Austin, Texas

The timing worked out perfectly this year for me to do a dedicated Christmas-specific post featuring my favorite Christmas Tree series from the Driskill Hotel. Last year, I was in the middle of my Las Vegas pictures and opted not to show a Christmas tree. A week ago, I finally completed my long-running look at Paris. I posted some recent portraits, including some holiday-themed ones, as a build-up to today.

Unlike previous years, when I made a dedicated trip just to photograph the tree, I was downtown testing a new camera. I stopped by the Driskill to take a shot, and despite being there earlier than usual, I was able to make a clean image without others in the frame. Unfortunately, there were some distracting elements, including a keyboard still set up from a previous event. It was far from optimal.

However, I did some post-processing to “make lemonade out of lemons,” as they say. I added a heavy vignette and brightened the center, thus (mostly) hiding the distracting keyboard and adding a glow to the Christmas Tree. The resulting effort creates more drama and greatly enhances the mood — a win-win for image creation.

Merry Christmas.

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