The snowy landscape is a staple of Christmas imagery, even for those that live in otherwise snowless climes. One year, I was in Hawaii in mid-December and was amazed at all the holiday decorations that involved snow and Santas wearing heavy red jackets in a climate for which the t-shirt is de-rigor. Maybe it's Madison Avenue's influence. I wonder sometimes.

In any case, here's my own little bit of Christmas imagery for the holiday:

Being the Inside Lightroom blog, I should really show you something about the way I processed the image. Here's the original as I took it while traveling on a lonely road somewhere in Utah:

There were a few major components of this photograph's journal from capture to the finished product above. The most important are in three areas. First off, there's a bit of work in the Tone Curve:

Next up was a bit of work in the Greyscale tool:

And finally, a bit of split toning:

There's also a bit of vignetting to flavor. It's amazing what you can do with a little work.

Now that I've fulfilled my Inside Lightroom mission, I'll sign off with visions of sugar plums and Leica lenses dancing in my head. Merry Christmas everyone! I hope that you and yours have a great holiday season and that 2008 will bring lots of great photographs as well as improvements to the tools that we use to process them.