Day 352- Starbursts?

This was one of those frustrating photography days. The theme is through the looking glass, referring to using a door, window, or mirror as a frame.  My plan was to take a photo of my Christmas tree reflected in the mirror of my hutch- simple, right? I wanted to use a small aperture, so that the lights would show up as starbursts.  I used my tripod with a long exposure and focused on the tree. No starbursts! I tried all different exposures and focus points and would run upstairs to check my focus after every few photos. Nothing looked right, and I finally realized that the soft focus of the Christmas cards in front were detracting from the photo. I decided at that point to forget about the starbursts and go for an HDR photo.  I focused on the cards and took a series of bracketed shots.  After deciding on the set I liked, I edited them in Photomatix for my HDR processing- and discovered faint starbursts. Go figure!