Photographing your Christmas tree {Delight & Be Savvy}
It’s that wonderful time of the year, when we are surrounded by all things glitter and shiny! I absolutely love getting fun tree or christmas light images, but I still have some favorites from last year I want to share with you too! Sometimes it can be tricky to catch that magical glow that the lights give off, and if you haven’t learned manual yet, your Auto flash will totally kill your vibe! Hopefully you can either learn some tips, or if you already know, get some inspiration from this post!
A few tips before we begin,
1. Shoot in RAW (Make sure you have something like Lightroom or ACR that can read RAW files and edit them) it will work wonders!
2. Get a tripod for full tree images, I have a cheap one that only goes up to 3.5 feet, but on a table, its perfect ;) If not, A steady hand is fine too, sometimes I prefer that!
3. A basic knowledge of Manual mode! Don’t be afraid of high ISO, grain is ok!
Bokeh, I love it when the tree is in the background, pick a fun subject or even just a cup of coffee and set it in front of your tree. Crank your f/stop down pretty low and make sure your subject it a few feet away so you can get big, creamy bokeh!
My favorite lenses for things like this are primes, try a nifty fifty or an 85mm! Very versatile and makes GREAT christmas Bokeh!
Ornaments can be tricky, sometimes you don’t have very many lights on your tree and you want to get close but you’re having a hard time capturing that glow that your naked eye sees. The trick to this is a steady hand and High ISO!
For the Image below my settings were 1.8, 1/60 and ISO 6400. I just used my cheap little 50mm 1.8! You can see the grain but I went with it and used it in my post processing, if you have Lightroom you can actually take most of that out with the “Noise Reduction tool’! Its a life saver! You can even add grain into your edit, play around with it, and have fun! Don’t be afraid to take images that push your camera settings, and remember not every image has to be technically perfect! There is nothing wrong with some grain, glow or motion blur, in moderation of course!
Next, Get out your tripod or take a deep breath for a steady hand. If you choose to do that like I did keep your camera no lower that 1/160 and be steady! Turn out most of your house lights and let the tree glow! Bump up your ISO as high as possible (Most likely it will be somewhere around 5000) and bring down your shutter speed! I like to keep my f-stop around 2.2 so everything is in focus still! Try out some different settings, maybe you’ll get to turn out all your lights, or maybe you’ll need one on, Just for fun, I took this image in the dark, and we don’t have too many lights on our tree this year! I still love how you can capture the glow of the tree! Its totally an imperfect photo, but hey, thats art, right?
I hope this helps you, or inspires you! Crank up some christmas music and get snapping! Show me your christmas pictures and let me know if you have any questions! Merry merry Christmas!
