Every year, we have the "tradition" of opening up a present a week before Christmas for the following reasons:
- The kids get a lot of gifts and when they open it all on one day, many great toys get pushed aside or forgotten since they can only play with one thing at a time. Spreading out the gifts gets more entertainment mileage from everyone's generosity.
- It allows a bit more focus on the story of Christmas on the 25th
- It allows me to play with my new iPad guilt free. Thanks wifey.
So bright smiles abound to Aidan and Zoe. Aidan was preoccupied building a 1000 piece Lego Star Wars gunship but my other lovely model was able and willing.
Special thanks this week to Arkadiy for helping me get past my photographer's blogging block over on my Facebook page and suggesting this week's post. So tonight we're going to talk about taking photos of the Christmas lights in your home or neighborhood. Unfortunately, I got sick (thus the Lights Out title) so all the photographs will be indoor examples.
Fortunately, my model was in betterspirits than I was and provided a variety of unsolicited poses with her unicorn (her Christmas gift from her brother who painstakingly saved for it). With Christmas lights or evening photos of city lights, you typically want to dial down the exposure compensation (basically the knob that tells your camera you want everything darker) by 1-2 stops or use the night setting (usually a moon and/or star icon) on your point and shoot. This sets the mood (that's its dark and not broad daylight) and prevents the lights from appearing washed out.
If we stopped there than my girl would be in the dark so my little sweetheart is illuminated with a 24" softbox, camera high, from six feet up pointing down so it didn't cast an awkward shadow on the tree in the back. You of course don't need your child in the photo which greatly simplifies things (just like not having kids simplifies a lot of things) but what's Christmas without your kids smiling back at you.
Technical Baby Photography Tips: What you want more? Okay, the softbox light is gelled with a 1/2 CTO so the light coming out of it is about half as warm as the tungsten lights on the tree. Actually I have no idea if all the lights are tungsten but lets just pretend I know what I'm talking about. Generally I do the opposite and have the subject warmer than the background but that's the beauty of photography - there's always opportunities to mix things up or pretend that something that happened to work was intentional. The camera settings were set to Av Mode so the camera would meter for the ambient light (minus a stop and a half or so) at ISO 400 and f2. Oh, the most important tip: have fun and enjoy your family, friends and the iPad, I mean loved ones.
Related Posts:
Our Christmas Card - In case you'd like to see more photos of our Christmas tree (and our smiling faces).
Last Christmas - Wow! The kids have really grown up and so has my photography of them.
Other Ideas - My contact info if you have other ideas feel free to email me or find me on my photography FaceBook page.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PhatPhotographer/~3/a1Kq0A1928k/bright-smiles-and-lights-out.html
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