By Tata Rossi 11 days ago, Amateur Photography
While taking pictures of Christmas lights turn off your flash. Go for a slower shutter speed, and plonk your camera onto a tripod to steer clear of any shaky snaps.
For a Christmas light photoshoot, your best bet is a DSLR or mirrorless camera with either a macro or a versatile wide-angle lens. However, you can also take some shots with a smartphone, enabling a night mode.
Whether you're experimenting with Christmas maternity photoshoot ideas or capturing portraits, working in a poorly lit environment involves tweaking three main settings (ISO, Aperture, and Shutter Speed) and adjusting the white balance.
When taking pictures in dim lighting, you have to tweak your camera to make up for the scarcity of light. In low-light conditions, it's a good idea to raise ISO. However, bear in mind that the higher the ISO, the more grain your pictures acquire. As a general guideline, play around with ISO values but try to keep it as low as possible for that specific environment.
Begin at ISO 400 or 600. Such a setting should be enough to deal with most dark environments and if that isn’t sufficient, simply increase the exposure time until you’re satisfied with the result.
Employ the camera’s A or AV mode to adjust the depth of field and determine the focus area. Go with a smaller aperture like f/8 or f/12 to increase the depth of field and have the entire shot in focus or go with a larger setting such as f/2.8 or f/1.8 to make the depth of field shallower, ensuring the Christmas lights in the background look like blurry, vibrant circles.
After you've set the aperture and ISO, start tweaking the shutter speed. This step is crucial to bring in more light and get a mesmerizing Christmas photo. The lower the shutter speed, the bigger the exposure duration and the less grain in your images. The only downside of using a lower shutter speed is that you’ll have to deal with the camera’s hypersensitivity to motion so you can’t get by without a tripod.
With a tripod in the setup, begin by dialing in a shutter speed around 1/8 or 2/5 of a second, then tweak it based on the results you want to get. When photographing Christmas lights with a camera in hand, I eschew setting shutter speed below 1/50. Such numbers also allow photographers to stave off flickering in photos, especially if a camera lacks an anti-flickering mode.
If you're shooting outdoors, raise the shutter speed to get twinkling lights. This way, you can capture the entire light cycle without the hassle of tweaking other exposure settings. But make sure you are in the Shutter priority mode.
Since Christmas lights shine in different colors and the ambient lighting can be quite different too, it’s recommended to go with the “Auto White Balance” mode when taking photos and ensure you’re working in RAW format. This way, any color temperature fluctuations in your images can be fixed at the post processing stage.
When taking pictures outdoors, it's crucial to choose the right time. I wouldn't advise shooting in complete darkness because managing exposure can get tricky. The lights may look entirely blurry or seem to be hanging in emptiness. The best time for photographing lights outdoors is around twilight or dusk.
If you begin taking pictures of Christmas lights at night right after sunset, it will already be dark enough for the lights to be nicely visible while the rest of the scene will still be nicely detailed without drawing too much attention to itself.
About 10 minutes after sundown is another great timeframe for Christmas light photoshoot. This time is referred to as Blue Hour when the entire sky has a nice blue hue to it as long as it’s a clear day. Such an environment suits the colorful, vibrant nature of festive lights perfectly.
Taking pictures of Christmas trees, menorahs, or any indoor lighting setup can be a bit more challenging than capturing scenes outdoors. Your camera might struggle to find the right balance between the dark background and the actual bulbs, making automatic settings less effective. To overcome this, introduce additional lamps or alternative light sources into the room to illuminate your shadows and reduce the contrast that could potentially perplex your camera.
Photographing Christmas trees, menorahs, or any indoor lights can pose more challenges than when working outdoors. Your camera might struggle to find the right balance between the dark background and bulbs, making automatic settings less effective. To overcome this, add more lamps or alternative light sources into the room to fill in shadows and reduce the contrast that could potentially confuse your camera.
Knowing how to photograph Christmas lights isn’t enough to get winsome images. You should also invest in additional equipment, e.g., a tripod. If you work without it, you risk degrading image quality due to lower shutter speeds. In fact, using a tripod is the only surefire way to take images at long exposures without sacrificing crispness and clarity.
If you have a tripod and set a low shutter speed, employ the camera’s timer to take photos remotely. The majority of modern cameras have WiFi or Bluetooth support that allows you to control them remotely by using an application on your phone. As a result, you can receive sharper images with zero camera shake.
Conversely, if you’ve set a higher shutter speed, like 1/60, there’s no need to take photos remotely since you’ll get the same result by just releasing the shutter manually.
Add any elements you want to show and remember to include a bit of negative space or surfaces that bounce light back. Snow, water, or even damp concrete can add an extra flair to your photos by gently reflecting the glow of lights.
If you're taking photos indoors, set up a specific photo area. One of the Christmas photo booth ideas is to arrange the place around the Christmas tree, adding dwarves and other thematic decorations.
When photographing Christmas lights, pay attention to leading lines. These can be wires, branches, benches, or even the horizon. You have probably come across images with such elements. They not only make people examine pictures more attentively but also add a three-dimensional touch to photos.
How to take outdoor portraits with Christmas lights? First off, you need to switch your camera to a Night Portrait Mode. By doing so, you will metaphorically signal your camera to activate the flash, brightening up a person in the front, while also keeping the lens open for a bit to soak in radiant lights in the background.
To enhance a portrait taken against the festive glow of Christmas lights, you can use the Fix The Photo Editor & Retouch app. Simply upload your photo, add instructions, and the retouchers will spruce up your shot within a working day. Plus, you can test the service for free.
For a magical holiday portrait with a beautiful background bokeh, you need to get close to your subject. Besides, choose a long focal length and set the aperture in the f/2.8 or f/1.8 range. If your camera has an aperture priority mode, the task will be even simpler. By adjusting the aperture during Christmas lights photoshoot, you will get other settings like shutter speed and ISO automatically corrected, so you’ll end up with a perfect exposure.
Apart from the typical bokeh you can achieve with your camera's lens, you can add a natural bokeh effect during image editing.
When learning how to take pictures of Christmas lights for portraits, a good idea might be to add some lights to the foreground for an unconventional foreground bokeh effect that also helps better highlight the model’s face.
In this mode, you can capture Christmas lights at night without overexposure. Start by taking several photos on the road. Your night shots will feature vibrant Christmas lights blending in with the streaks of light from passing cars.
Editing is very important when working with Christmas light photos, as it allows you to make the colors livelier and minimize noise. Use your preferred photo editing software for beginners to boost the contrast, strengthen the highlights and whites and darken the shadows and blacks.
Adjust the exposure. Thus, you can swiftly brighten up a dark image. Drag sliders and play around with Brightness, Contrast, Highlights, and Shadows until you reach a perfect balance.
Get rid of the noise. Some cameras actually come with built-in features for reducing noise. However, sometimes that's not enough, and that's where noise reduction software like Photoshop or Luminar steps in. You can use them as standalone applications or expand their functionality by integrating plugins, such as Topaz Denoise.
Broaden the tonal range of a picture. When photographing in Manual mode, get one exposure with the finest highlight details and another with well-defined shadow details. Blend these two shots in Photoshop as separate layers.
Use the Eraser tool to eliminate poorly exposed regions, uncovering details, and harness the best parts of each layer/exposure. Skilled photographers may even create two individual photos from a single RAW file – one showcasing highlights, the other shadows.
Experiment with overlays. These are wonderful tools to use for Christmas baby photoshoot ideas or love stories. With these, it is possible to highlight the beauty of Christmas lights. Using overlays from FixThePhoto, you can beautify your Christmas images in a quick way.
Overlays make editing a breeze. You won't have to spend ages improving your shots. Just add the overlay you want to your photo and make the customizations if needed. Plus, they work smoothly with all the latest versions of Photoshop.
With the help of this collection of free Christmas bokeh overlays, you can make all your wintertime pictures look beautiful and magical in just a few clicks. You can use overlays in Photoshop for both RAW and JPEG images.
