Secrets to Photographing Christmas Lights
Many studio-style Christmas pictures I came across merely left the tree lights turned off, leaving a colder feeling to an already chilly month. To me, the lights on the tree are what makes Christmas so magical, and I wanted to be sure to capture that glow perfectly! To achieve this, I learned I first had to properly expose the background, and in this case it was the tree. In my image on the left (above), my settings were using a 50mm prime lens at ISO 160, f/1.4, and 1/160 shutter speed. However, now I had the issue of the subject being underexposed. To achieve this, I simply added a single strobe in an umbrella. In the same photo on the left I had a single Profoto D1 set to 6.5 and bounced it off the wall behind me to create a softer glow. Problem solved for the picture on the left! The image on the right had its own set of issues. When I first saw a similar picture on Pinterest of a baby tangled up in glowing Christmas lights I had to recreate it for myself! However, each time I would turn off any external lighting and only light the scene with Christmas lights I would get red spots all over my image (see example below).
With a little practice, you too can take magical Christmas photos with a little less difficulty and you can save your holiday frustration for detangling the lights!
Keywords:
Christmas pictures,
Hartsville TN photographer,
editing,
lighting,
photographing Christmas lights,
photography
Comments
No comments posted.
Loading...
|