Monday, December 7, 2009

Photographing Christmas lights

Photographing Christmas lights for a novice photographer like myself can be a bit challenging. So I turned to the pros for some advice. To my surprise, the best advice I found was to photograph the outdoor lights around dusk and to incorporate as much sky in the photo as possible.

So armed with this knowledge I braved the cold last night. I set the camera's ISO to 1600 but set the white balance at auto. I set my mode dial to prioritize the aperture which also means no flash. Most importantly, I set the camera on a tripod.

I am pretty pleased with the results. This is the most crisp . . . clear photo I've ever been able to capture of outdoor Christmas lights.

My next challenge was taking pictures of our own Christmas tree. The camera setting for both of these pictures were the same as before. The first picture simply leveraged the natural daylight. The second photo, taken in the evening hours, captures the warmth and the glow of our tree in the living room.




Hope this information helps you capture on film the warmth and glow of the season.

Thanks for stopping by . . .
Yoli

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Que bueno ver tu notita de como estas tomando las fotos de luces de navidad! me gusta la fotografia y me encantaria poner mi camara en manual mode para experimentar en estas navidades! no se mucho pero si quiero aprender! gracias por compartir!

Yoli said...

Jannette . . . me alegro que encontrastes los retratos de gusto. Espero poder ver tus fotos en tu blog cuando comienzes a experimentar con la camera. :-)

suetography said...

This is so fantastic - I love the last photo - magazine worthy!

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