Holiday Light tutorial

I was up late last night trying out something I’ve been reading about.

I really wanted to get a good picture of our Christmas tree all lit up.

Every year I snap a picture that looks something like this:

Look familiar?

Kind of blah.  Nothing special. At the least  I will remember what our tree looked like in 2009.

But I wanted a fantastic picture of our tree.  Something that expresses the beauty of the Christmas season.

So I’ve been reading up on how to get one of these images you might see in a magazine.

I was up late last night, after everyone went to bed, trying out what I learned.

Here are the results:

Better, right?

So, I thought I would share what I learned with you all so you too can take some spectacular pictures of your holiday lights this year.

Take these at night.

You’ll need:

• A tripod (a must.  I tried without one and it was a disaster)
• A camera you can shoot in Manual mode.  (most point-and-shoots can be shot in manual)
• some Christmas lights

Without going into a long explanation of why and what the settings do, set your camera to these:

manual mode (usually an M on your camera)

aperature: f/16-22 (my camera only goes up to 16 but some will go higher)

ISO: 100-200

shutter speed: 20-30 seconds

You’ll have to play around with the settings until you get just the right amount of light.

Put your camera on a tripod.

Adjust so you get the entire tree in your view finder.

Turn on the tree lights.

turn off all other lights

click and then don’t touch the camera

wait

check viewfinder

adjust settings until you get the desired beautiful, amazing, spectacular, awe-inspiring image of your holiday lights!

Good luck and let me know how it goes.