Photo by Daniel Kiechle
Christmas Dreams
I was struck by the dreamy look in this young boy’s eyes with the Christmas tree lights in the background. The opening of the presents was still a few days off; was he thinking of what may be in the packages under the tree? I shot this with a Fujifilm X-T5 camera with a Fujifilm XF 33mm f/1.4 R LM WR prime lens. The camera was set to 1/125s in shutter speed priority mode and I adjusted the ISO so that I could use the maximum opening of the lens at f/1.4 to keep the background out of focus.
Post processing notes:
This is a small crop of a larger photo shot in landscape format. I used Resize AI to size the image so that it would print properly in an 8 × 10 format. I also use Portrait AI to slightly whiten the eyes. I almost always add a vignette; in this case, I wanted to draw the viewer’s eyes to the boy’s face. All processing was done in ON1 Photo RAW 2026 Max in June 2026.Exif information:
| Copyright: | (C) Daniel Kiechle |
| Camera: | X-T5 |
| Aperture: | f/1.4 |
| Focal Length: | 33mm |
| ISO: | 320 |
| Shutter Speed: | 1/125 sec. |