Last year, Ava didn't pay much attention to the Christmas tree. This year, she is totally amazed by the fact that we have a tree in our living room with lights and ornaments on it. I took a bunch of candid shots while Ava was exploring the tree when we first put it up. This was my favorite of the bunch, mainly due to how the light worked out (this is all natural light (and the lights from tree).
One interesting thing that happened in this one is that I had a cheap UV filter on my lens (I normally keep it on for protection). The filter, though, in scenes like this (and birthday candles) creates light reflections that typically ruin the picture. Here, in my eye, they kind of add to the "magical" quality of the photo (you can see the reflections around Ava's face).
PS - I deleted the Gingerbread House picture. The picture looked fine on my macbook screen, but when I looked at it on my calibrated screen, I was horrified to see that the dark background wasn't so dark and some cloning that I did looked terrible. That will teach me to edit on my laptop. :.)
