Christmas Lights Photography

Photography by Caitlyn Curtis


Christmas Lights Photography

Halloween is over and it is getting closer to Christmas! That means there are going to be many opportunities to photograph the beautiful Christmas lights. However, sometimes it can be difficult to capture them correctly. There are also many ways to use Christmas lights to give you fun effects in your images. Here are some great tips to photographing Christmas lights and creating a cool bokeh effect on your images, similar to the picture above.


The settings on your camera should be for low light since it is usually dark when shooting Christmas lights outside but it will give the lights a pop in your image. When setting the ISO it should be around 400 depending on how dark your image is. However, do not go above an ISO of 800 because it will make the image grainier than it needs to be. When setting the aperture it should be around f/3 and f/8 depending on how much light you want in your image. Also, when using incandescent white balance can help give the color to the bulbs.


If you want to create a bokeh effect, which is to blur the lights to make it glow or sparkle, you will need to adjust your camera settings in a different way. When setting the aperture you want to use larger numbers such as f/22. This allows your background to be blurred out and the lights to be balls. Also, depending on how far away you are from your subject can also make them bigger or smaller. If you want to get really fancy you can cut out pieces of different shapes and use them to transform the lights into hearts, octagons, triangles or even stars. When using the bokeh effect it can take your photography to the next level.



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