Photography Tips, Art, and Music
Photography
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Feb 26th
It’s just a few days until Christmas so I thought a quick tutorial on the topic of Christmas Photography might be appropriate. Hopefully this will give you some good Christmas photo ideas.
Here are 16 Christmas Photography tips and ideas to try that come to mind for digital camera owners wanting to capture the big day:
1. Prepare – Making a List, checking it twice….
Making sure you’re ready to capture any planned event is part of the key to a successful shoot. Getting yourself ready but also the location of your shots is worthwhile.
Pack the camera – goes without saying? I forgot mine last year in the rush to get the car packed. Make sure your batteries are charged and you have extras and/or the recharger packed. Pack extra memory cards – have them empty and ready to fill up Put someone on ‘photos’ – our family has someone on drinks, main course, dessert – why not put someone on ‘photos’ so that in the craziness of the day they don’t get forgotten. Consider the light in the room that you’ll be photographing in. Is there enough light? Will you need a flash? Are the backgrounds too cluttered and distracting? 2. A White Balance Christmas
Here in Australia we often celebrate Christmas outdoors, but many people around the world do it inside in unnatural lighting. Pay attention to what type of light you’re shooting in and set your white balance settings accordingly. Alternatively, if you’ve got a camera that shoots in RAW you can shoot away and set your white balance later.
3. Set up a DIY ‘Photo Booth’ The shots were great – people went back to it throughout the party and the photos got crazier and crazier as time went on. It was the hit of the party. 4. Capture the preparation stages Photo by paper by design
The actual Christmas meal or party is obviously the best part of the day, but there are other photographic opportunities, particularly in the preparations stages of the day.
Food preparation Putting up decorations Wrapping gifts Kids throwing a tantrum while getting dressed in their Christmas outfits Setting the table
The shots before the event starts properly are often great because they show everything at it’s best before everyone descends on your party zone.
5. Before and After Shots
Speaking of shots before the party starts, why not set up some before and after shots both of the place you’re holding your party and what it looks like afterwards. Make sure you take the shots from the same position.
6. Time-lapse Christmas series
I have one friend who set up his computer with a web cam in the corner of the room with the camera looking down on the Christmas table. He set the camera to go off every 5 minutes over the day and ended up with one of the most wonderful series of shots that I’ve seen for a long time.
Photo by rachel r 7. Christmas Lights
Photographing Christmas lights is something that can be tricky to do. David Hobby from Strobist has put together a great tutorial on how to do it. Check it out at How to Photograph Christmas Lights.
8. Find a Point of Interest – but just per shot
All good shots should have a focal point that holds the attention of those viewing your images. The problem with Christmas is that there can often be too many competing focal points in shots with people, color, decorations, food in every shot. Work hard and de-cluttering your images. Check out this post on minimalism which contains some tips on de-cluttering images.
9. Fresh Group Photos
One of the most common types of shots at Christmas is the ‘group photo’. It’s usually taken at the end of the evening or day when everyone is looking at their worst. For a ‘fresher’ shot take it once everyone has arrived. Also think before hand about how you might pose everyone and where you might take the shot. I’ve posted 12 tips for taking a great group photo previously.
10. Opening Gifts – Shoot in Continuous Mode
There are certain moments during a Christmas gathering that are filled with all manner of photographic opportunities and the opening of gifts is like no other in that it is filled with an array of emotions, facial expressions and excitement – especially if you’ve got kids around. Switch your camera to burst mode (sometimes called continuous shooting mode) and take lots of shots at this time of the festivities. You’ll find you end up with some excellent series of shots when you do this that capture everything from the anticipation of getting the wrapped gift, through to the excitement of unwrapping to the joy (or occasionally disappointment) of seeing what’s inside. Don’t forget to shoot the reactions of those who GIVE the gift as well.
Photo by grace*c* 11. Fill your Frame
One of the most common mistakes I see in Christmas photos (or any party/even photography) is that people often end up with shots of their subjects off in the distance on the other side of a room with lots of space around them. Fill your frame with your subject either by using your zoom or getting up and moving yourself closer. While this is one of the simplest tips I ever give it is one that can have the most profound impact on your shots.
12. Diffuse/Reflect Your Flash
- Another common problem with Christmas shots is ending up with shots where the flash is so bright that subjects look like rabbits in a spotlight with harsh shadows behind them. One way around this is to use some sort of a flash diffuser or reflector. If you’re lucky enough to have an external flash try bouncing it off walls or the ceiling. Another way to reduce the impact of your flash and to create some interesting effects is to switch your camera into ‘night mode’ (slow sync mode). This will tell your camera to choose a slower shutter speed but still fire your flash. In doing so it’ll capture some of the ambient light of the room as well as freeze your subject. Be warned, you can end up with some wacky shots doing this (but they can also be lots of fun).
13. Go Macro
Most digital cameras come with a macro mode and an increasing number of DPS readers are buying macro lenses so flick to that mode, attach your lens and photograph the smaller things around your party. Ornaments on the tree, table decorations, sweets in the bowl on the table, a nativity scene on the mantle piece, holly above the doorway – sometimes it’s these small things around your party that are the real ‘money shots’. Don’t forget our Macro Hacks for compact cameras.
Photo by Splat Worldwide 14. Watch Your Aperture
I quite often shoot in Aperture Priority mode on a day like Christmas and am constantly changing the aperture depending upon my subject. For example when taking shots of a christmas decorations on the tree I’ll select a large aperture (a small number like f/2.8) so as to throw the background out of focus, but on a shot taken from the end of the table of everyone sitting down eating I’ll choose a small aperture (like f/8 to f/11 or more) so as to have a larger depth of field and keep everyone in focus.
15. Explore Your Neighborhood
If your neighborhood is anything like mine there is an almost unlimited number of photographic opportunities presenting themselves all around you. Christmas carols services, houses covered in Christmas decorations, shopping malls filled with busyness etc. Get out there with your camera and capture it. What a wonderful time of year to practice using your camera. Have fun!
16. Related Reading:
Here’s another tutorial and discussion thread you might like to read in preparation for your Christmas Photography this year.
Share Your photos - Looking for some inspiration or wanting to share you Christmas shots? Head to the Christmas Assignment in our Forums to see what shots others are taking this Christmas and to share some of your own images. Candid Photography – this tutorial on candid photography might be helpful as much of what you’ll be doing at a Christmas even will be in this style. Christmas Wishes from DPS
Lastly – let me wish all Digital Photography School readers a very happy holiday period. It’s been a great two and a bit since we launched this blog and while I’m looking forward to a few days off over Christmas I also can’t wait to get back to DPS and to take it to the next level in 2009. Have a great holiday period and we’ll see you in the new year!
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Watch the video related to strobist photography
This is a brief introduction to basic gear and terminology for the beginning strobists, photographers using small off-camera flashes to take their photos to the next level.
Help answer the question about strobist photography
Fellow photogs: Ever hear of the ‘Strobist’ movement?
I’ve been doing some hot linking from a few of my other photography groups and from flickr and I ran across the ‘Strobist’ group. It sounds pretty cool, at least they think so, but I wanted to get the opinion of other photographers.
What is your thought on off camera flash lighting with small speedlight external flashes, as opposed to big and expensive pro studio lighting?
Has anyone ever heard of the strobist?
My opinion is that so far I have no opinion because I can’t say I’ve given it much thought. I have a need to improve my work with better lighting, but is this strobist ‘thing’ hype, or something that a lot of photographers have been doing all along?
And do we really want to snub our noses at our trusted i-TTL equipped speedlights?
Give me your opinions…
About Author
Terry Divyak -
About the Author:
Terry Divyak has been an avid photographer for over 30 years. With publisher photos featured on two magazine covers, he was also featured in Photo District News Magazine as a winner in the Pro Division of PDN’s World in Focus Travel Contest. This work appeared in Photo District News February 2008 issue. His current project is the photography informational site, www.piqfire.com
When Food And Photography Meet
Jan 31st
Photographing food is probably one of the most challenging kinds of photography out there. It is considered difficult by most professional food photographers because there is a time constraint in the whole photo shoot.
And since the marketability of the food itself depends primarily on how it is seen in print, food photographers should be well trained and skilled in order to come up with satisfying results. More >
Lens Aperture – What it Is, Does and How to Use it
Aug 7th
The lens aperture is a measure of how much light the lens will let through into the sensor in the camera body. The bigger the aperture is, the more light will shine through. Using a bigger aperture also results in less depth of field (depth of focus, DOF). If it’s difficult for you to remember, just think of the small, pocket-sized digital cameras you can get nowadays. They tend to render everything in focus opposed to the more sturdy, professional single-lens-reflex (SLR) cameras that have the ability to create soft, out-of-focus (OOF) areas behind the main subject. Big means plenty of light-sensitivity together with a narrow focus area.
The aperture is measured in terms of f-stops and this can perhaps be a bit confusing since a smaller f-stop is equivalent to a larger aperture. It is usually written like this, the scale going from large aperture to small aperture:
f/1.4, f/2, f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11, f/16…
These are the standard values, separated by one unit called an f-stop. Each lens has a maximum aperture and can be stopped down from there to gain larger depth of field and to set the exposure (which it does together with the shutter and ISO speed). Another good reason to stop down your lens (to use a smaller aperture) is that the lens usually works better when stopped down 2 to 4 stops from it’s maximum value. It draws sharper and lessens unwanted effects such as chromatic aberration and vignetting. Using a lens wide-open so to say, is rarely a good idea unless you are pressed for light or using an absolute top-of-the-line lens.
A fast lens, you say?
Sometimes the large-aperture lenses are also referred to by photographers as ‘fast lenses’. Strictly speaking this is nonsense since it’s still a piece of glass and not a racing car! But what it means is that with a large aperture, more light will come in allowing for a faster shutter time in the camera. The lens itself is in no way ‘fast’, it’s just easier to say that ‘the lens is fast’.
With a ‘fast lens’, you can use a high shutter speed, ie. in the thousandths, 1/1000 sec or less. This allows you to really capture moments that’s gone in the blink of an eye and opens up a new world of things that happen too quickly for the human eye to catch.
As is now evident, the depth of field is directly related to the lens aperture. Having one of these ‘fast lenses’ on your D-SLR camera gives you lot’s of creative possibilities. One of the big challenges in serious photography is to separate your main subject from all the background clutter, to focus the viewers attention on the subject without distractions. To get a blurry background, set the aperture quite high, go a little close to your subject (without exaggerating the perspective too much) and allow some distance between your subject and the background. It’s important to remember that the placement of you, your subject and the background also plays a role in how much blur-effect you get. It’s not only about what lens aperture you are using.
Bokeh
Ok, so now you have an out-of-focus background. But there’s a bit more to it than that. (Admittedly, we are moving into the subtler details now.) If you look at the out-of-focus areas of different photos, you’ll see that it can look quite different. Some lenses have a really nice, soft, smooth and silky way of rendering the out-of-focus details while others have a tendency to render hard rings and edges around high-contrast objects. This can be a bit distracting to look at although it is somewhat subjective. The quality of the out-of-focus areas is generally called ‘bokeh’ and is largely decided by the way the lens is constructed, how many aperture blades it has and what f-stop you are using. Photo aficionados can debate at length about the quality, characteristics and effects the bokeh has on a photo while more ‘normal’ people would give far more importance to the focused areas of the photo. In some genres though, it does play a significant role. In portrait photography, wildlife photography (using long tele-photo lenses) and macro photography the silky bokeh can really be the dot that makes the ‘i’, an add a magical touch that’s hard to pin down.
Try to incorporate some bokeh awareness into your photography and there’s most likely improvements to me made.
Digital Photography – F Stop Explained
Jul 18th
When you are using a camera, the media you are recording the image to is fixed in the amount of light required to create the image. This is referred to as the ISO, or speed, and is represented by a number such as ISO 400, 200, etc. The exposure to the light is controlled by the shutter speed and the aperture f/stop. This is a simple explanation of the f/stop mechanism.
First one must understand that the shutter speed and f/stop directly affect each other. The slower the shutter speed, the longer the exposure to the light. So, in order to prevent flooding, or overexposure, of the medium, the amount of the light must be reduced. This is done using the aperture, or f/stop, by decreasing the amount of area of the lens that is open to the light. The inverse is also true, if you wanted to take a photo of an athlete in motion but wanted very clear, crisp photos, you could use a very fast shutter speed, and a very wide aperture.
Now you know what it’s used for, here’s what the f/stop numbers mean. The numbers printed on your camera lens can range anywhere from f/1.0 to f/128, but this isn’t all of them, by any means. This number represents the ratio between the focal length of the lens, and the diameter of the aperture opening. For example, a 50mm lens with a 25mm aperture is a f/2 lens, and a 100mm lens with the same 25mm aperture setting is a f/4. Most every lens manufactured today has several f/stop adjustments available to the photographer, but the values printed on the barrels may be a rounded off, for simplicity.
For this example, keep the above in mind. If a person wanted to fill a container with water, but the container had a small hole at the entrance, the flow of the water must be reduced. This will require more time to fill the container, but if the opening is larger, the flow can be increased, thus allowing for faster filling. So, if the shutter speed is slow, i.e. 1/8, the f/stop number must be increased to allow less light in, to prevent overexposure. The opposite is true if the shutter speed is perhaps 1/125th the f/stop number should decrease, to allow more light in. This means that if the bottom number i=on the shutter speed gets bigger, the f/stop number should get smaller.
One last thing that should be mentioned is that the wider the aperture rating on a lens, the more expensive, and bulky they tend to be. there are lenses on the market, both new, and used, with maximum apertures of f/1.2, and as low as f/.95, but the costs of lenses like these can be prohibitive. That coupled with the fact that the f/.95 lens requires the use of a tri-pod, make these almost exclusively professional equipment.