Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, a few creatures were stirring, using a mouse.

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, stuffed to the brim ‘cuz Mom and Dad were already there.

The children were texting all over the house, while clicking on iPhones in browsers with a mouse.

And I with my camera, perched on a tripod, stealing photos, but leaving the iPods.

When off of the couch my nephew did rise, creating a blur right before my eyes,

I sprang from my seat to see what was the matter, adjusting the camera before my nephews could dash, I opened the shutter and turned off the flash.

The movement of people and an open shutter created enough ghosts to make me shudder.

When what to my jaded self did appear, but silliness, laughter, and even a happy tear.

While photography is a solitary past time for most photography addicts, there are certain effects that are just good family fun.  This Christmas, I set up my camera on my tripod (since I finally bought a good one, I thought I should get some use out of it) and used my remote to occasionally snap photos.  However, because I wanted to be stealthy about my shooting, I didn’t use the flash.  As a result, I had to use a slow shutter speed in the low light around the tree.  While I’m not sure my family has enough photo-tolerance to hold still for pictures anyway, the fact that they often didn’t know when the camera was shooting prevented them from trying.

As a result, I got a bunch of blurred shots that lead us to downright silliness in trying to create ghost images in the shots.

This turned into a game of trying to create the best ghost effect in the shot, at least for everyone except my oldest nephew, who was too busy texting to be silly.  The two photos included here were the best of the lot.  Both pictures have 7 people in them.  I like the first one because the “ghost” images on the left look like they’re dancing (or perhaps trying to dance but not exactly succeeding).  I like the second one because my youngest nephew successfully created a ghost boy looking over the shoulder of my older nephew.

Who knew photography could replace charades for family games?