Downtown Amherst in the Snowless Winter
Well, snowless until tomorrow morning and then Snowzilla on Sunday. But on December 30th the only telltale sign of winter was the lack of leaves on the Amherst Merry Maple.
Our Town Hall. Nobody out that morning except me and the street sweeper.
Stephen Gingold Nature Photography Blog 
Your picture reminds me of the courthouse square in Johnson City, Texas, which gets adorned with lights every Christmas season:
http://www.hillcountryportal.com/reports/LightsSpectacular/
Happy Sunday Snowzilla.
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Those are a little more elaborate.
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I like the occasional little starbursts among the lights on the maple. Here, we wrap palm trees. Most have white lights, but over by the Johnson Space Center, the palms along the boulevard were wrapped with red, white, and blue.
Your title recalled the old town criers, walking the streets, announcing the time, and assuring everyone that “all is well.”
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As I was the only one out and about at that time, I guess the Town Crier was I. Yes, I would expect the federal building to be a bit more noteworthy than a small town maple tree. Amherst has to be all inclusive and politically correct, hence the Merry Maple rather than the town Christmas Tree. Although Christmas was never my holiday, Merry Christmas is my choice of greeting with the occasional Happy Holidays. A greeting is a greeting, it does not matter to me which, and I am happy to receive either.
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Personally, I’ve always enjoyed celebrating the different holidays and accepting them as they are, rather than smooshing everything together into an amorphous mass. When I was in high school (Iowa, 1960s) there always was a formal Christmas dance. There weren’t many Jews in our town, but there were a few, and just as the Jewish kids came to our Christmas dance, we were invited and went to their Hanukkah Hop. Double parties for everyone!
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You nailed this technically, Steve. I know I would come up way short, trying to get the lights on the tree, the color of the sly, the lights in the distance, the building…. 🙂 Oh and the clock! Excellent!
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In fact, if you’re willing to share a few tips on the camera work and processing, I’m curious.
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Thanks, Lynn. As far as exposure goes, I tried to use the clock as my target. I couldn’t quite isolate it so had to do a series of shorter durations until there were no blinkies. Then back off the highlights during processing. and combine with another frame that had detail in the shadows. F/22 gave the image some starbursts.
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“No blinkies” – I like that! So you combined images for the highlights and shadows – that makes sense. I’ve just never done it. It could easily look wrong but you kept it natural-looking.
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I just let Lightroom assemble them and then tone it down. The highlights are usually dropped down too much and the shadows opened up a little too much. But easily corrected with a few slides. Then into Photoshop with additional adjustments when appropriate with some Nik filters and TKs actions.
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