I've been having a lot of fun getting to better know Mobile and the surrounding area since dating C, as his family moved over to Baldwin County when he was in middle school. The towns here aren't exactly hidden treasures, but considering prior to last summer I hadn't ventured much farther south than Birmingham, everything is about the Gulf Coast is still new to me. I'm loving getting to explore the bay area, and finding little local restaurants and shops that I would not otherwise stumble across. There's an extra dimension of interest here, as a large chunk of my college friends hailed from Mobile or Fairhope or Spanish Fort, and as a result I spent four years hearing all sorts of stories about the area.
Anyway, all of that is a rather scatterbrained intro to Fairhope's Christmas tree lighting. My friend Ann and I ventured across the bay for the festivities a couple weeks back, as a sort of quick little reprieve during the end-of-module chaos. I was expecting the town to have a giant Christmas tree [I guess I'm too used to Bridge Street doing its thing every year], so I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Fairhope's mode of holiday decorating involves stringing lights and decorations over all the trees in the downtown area. The high school band was assembled to play music and people were walking around selling hot chocolate, and there was fake snow blowing all over the place. It was as close to magical as you could expect in a climate where it barely drops below 60 degrees during the winter [I'm going to be bitter about the weather for years to come].
I brought my new speedlight along, as it seemed like a good opportunity to play around with the settings, although I can't say I made any great strides in figuring out to use it. The photo above was flash-less, whereas the photo below was flash-assisted [attempt 6 of about 10]. It definitely helped illuminate the foreground better, although it's still not exactly great.
Boom. Two med students out proving you can enjoy life every now and then.
It took us several tries, multiple people, and two different phones for us to get a picture that turned out all right. Multiple attempts were way too dark, even with flash on; I ended up having to switch into pro mode on my phone camera and manually balance out the exposure beforehand in order to get us to be visible in front of all these bright trees.