Christmas Morning Photos: 19 Quick Tips

Christmas time is here and I just wanted to share a few quick tips for being able to capture those Christmas morning memories. So, here they are:

• Charge up your batteries for your camera and put fresh batteries in your flash.
• Format your memory card and make sure to have a backup memory card handy.
• If you have a DSLR and a fast prime lens, then Christmas morning is the time to use them both. A fast lens can really make taking low light photos much easier.
• The night before Christmas be sure to clean up the area around the tree, vacuum or sweep the floor, get rid of piles of magazines, trash or anything else in the background or foreground that might be distracting.
• Talk to the children a few days before Christmas about where you might like them to sit and take a few practice shots. This practice session will help keep kids from sitting with their backs to the camera and will help keep children from sitting in front of one another and blocking your view and ability to take some great candid photos.
• After Santa comes and before you go to sleep make sure and take a picture of the tree. This does not have to be a work of art just a nice reminder of what it looked like before the kids get to the presents.
• Have the kids in modest festive pajamas, or better yet set out some nice clothes and tell everyone to get dressed before anyone can go in to see what Santa left under the tree.
• Get down on the ground and take pictures at eye level with the kids and don’t make the kids look at the camera.

.
Candid photos are a great way to capture Christmas Memories.

• Avoid having a large bright light or window directly behind your subject and be sure to set your exposure metering to center weighted or spot metering, either of these settings will help the camera ignore any back lighting that might occur.
• If you are using an external flash unit then remember to use a flash diffuser or bounce the light off of the ceiling or a white wall.
• If you only have a built in flash then turn it off, or at the very least make sure that the red-eye reduction setting is turned on.
• If you are shooting without a flash then bump up the ISO to ISO 400 or ISO 800. Sure the photos might be a little noisy, but at least they will not be blurry.

A little blur is not always a bad thing.

• Shoot in manual or shutter priority mode and try to get as slow of a shutter as you can that will produce an image without blurring movement. I typically will shoot at about 1/160 of a second shutter speed. If your kids are really tearing into the toys then you might have to bump that up a bit, and if your kids are a bit more methodical then perhaps you could slow it down some. Remember to check a few exposures up front to make sure that you are not getting a blurry mess.

Even a shutter speed of 1/125s can freeze the action. She was really ripping the paper off of this present.

• Shoot lots of pictures.
• After the presents are all open then pose a few shots if you want. Then, while the kids are basking in the glow of Christmas, keep taking a few shots of them playing with the toys. I recommend not using the flash and stay a little further away from the kids. This is the time when they will forget that you are taking photos and you are sure to get some fantastic candid photos that will really tell the story of this special time of year.

After the presents are opened, if the kids want to pose with a few toys then be ready to capture the moment.

• If you have pets be on the lookout for them being curious. Remember, this is an exciting day for them too and they can be the subject of some very memorable holiday photos.

Remember that is a big day for your pets too.

• Get in a few pictures yourself. Don’t worry if you feel fat, old, or ugly, your kids love you just the way you are and they will cherish the photos of you when they are grown.
• Most importantly, remember that you are not trying to create art with these pictures. These are snapshots. They do not need to be perfect, they are to record the moment, not to be hung in a gallery.
• Remember to back up your photos as soon as you get the chance to do so. I recommend printing the best photos and sharing them with family and friends using the internet and social media. One word of caution when sharing, make sure that only the people you want to see your pictures can see them, unfortunately there are people out there that are up to no good and they shouldn’t have access to current pictures of your kids, particularly if GPS coordinates are embedded in the picture file or the included with a post.

I hope you have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

-- William

Bonus Tip: Don’t worry about the quality of the camera. If you only have an old point and shoot or a cell phone, still get in there and take pictures. The following photo was taken with a 3 mega pixel point and shoot, you can see that the color is terrible and it is grainy and a bit washed out. However, this was the best camera I had at the time. The technical quality of this image does not matter so much as does the fact that I was able to capture the moment.

Tags: Holidays, Flash, Natural Light, Candid, Pets, Christmas, Children, Prime Lens, DSLR, Point and Shoot

A Window and a Smile: The art of the impromptu portrait.

This article is for the beginner who wants to take portraits of their children, spouse, family and/or friends. No special equipment is needed other than a point and shoot camera, a subject, a window and the sun. If you have a DSLR that is great, but you don’t need one to make a stunning portrait; and to prove it, I used my point and shoot to do all the photographs for this article.

1) Set the camera. Most digital point and shoot cameras have what is known as a portrait mode. The portrait mode setting is usually found on a dial or on a menu and usually looks like a cartoon drawing of a child’s head. If your point and shoot or DSLR has this setting, then turn it there before you get ready to take the photograph. If your camera does not have this setting, see if it has an ‘exposure’ selection or ‘metering mode.’ If it only has metering mode then select ‘spot exposure’ or ‘center weighted.’ Basically you are going to want to expose the photograph just for the subject and not for the background, so the camera needs to ignore as much of the picture as it can when determining the correct exposure.

Graphic by Althepal
A typical mode selection dial on a point and shoot or DSLR camera. The dial is currently set to Auto but should be turned to the portrait mode in preparation for portrait photography.

2) Find a window. The ideal window will have venetian style blinds or perhaps a sheer curtain that allows the majority of the light to pass through into the room. I like the blinds because I can control just how much light enters the room. However, in a pinch a window with no blinds or curtain will do just fine. Here is an example:


This is the window at my doctor’s office.

3) Place your subject next to the window. The idea here is to get the subject close enough to the window that the light shines on one side of their face while leaving the other side of their face in partial shadow. This type of lighting is called Rembrandt lighting. As you you may have already guessed, this is how Rembrandt posed his subjects when he would prepare to paint them. So, in his honor, this style of lighting is named after him.


Rembrandt lighting: Place your subject near the window with the person half facing the window and turned to look back at you. One half of the face should be in partial shadow.

4) Turn off the lights. Yep, turn the lights off and for heaven’s sake do not turn on your camera’s flash. The only source of light should be the sunlight streaming in through the window.


Turn off the lights.

5) Zoom in and take the picture. After placing your subject near the window, turn off the lights, and get about 6 - 8 feet away from your subject. Have your subject look at you, zoom in to the top 1/3 of their body, say something funny and push the shutter button when they smile. That is really all there is to it. Just fill up the frame, get them smiling and take the picture.


This portrait was taken using a Lunix LX5 set to portrait mode. The only source of light was sun through a window. The photo has been cropped to 8” x 10” format and color/contrast correct. A slight blur was added to the bottom portion of the photo and a very slight vignette was added to the bottom left and right corners of the photograph. The blur and vignette were added in an attempt to conceal a few wrinkles in the shirt of the subject but should not be considered requisite to the processing of the portrait.

That is really all there is to taking an impromptu portrait. Get out there and get shooting.

-- Enjoy

Tags: Point and Shoot, Natural Light, Portrture, Rembrandt lighting

In the last article I discussed using a polarizing filter to reduce reflection when shooting through glass on a visit to a museum. However, there are times when you don’t have a polarizing filter or you may be shooting with a point and shoot camera or a cell phone. The good news is that even with these limiting factors you can still get a great photo.

The problem: A quick review of the problem of shooting in a location like a Museum or Aquarium.

• Most Museums or Aquariums do not allow flash photography, and even if they did the flash would reflect off of glass front displays.
• Most Museums or Aquariums will not allow the use of a tripod or mono-pod. In most cases they want to prevent scarring of the floor and they want to provide a safe and unobstructed walking area for guests.
• When shooting through glass, often ambient light sources are reflected in the glass.

Notice the reflected ambient light in the photo above. Even with a polarizing filter I might not be able to eliminate all of the reflections in this shooting situation. So, a different approach should be taken.

The Solution: Get up close and personal.

When you find yourself unable to eliminate the reflection, either because the reflection is too large or because you don’t have a polarizing filter it is time to get up as close to the glass as you can. Sure, it will change the type of photograph that you would like to take but in most instances it will improve the quality of your images so much that you will wonder why you wanted the other images in the first place.



This photo is of a model of a prehistoric fish. I shot this through glass with a camera phone.

Steps to getting up close:

• Survey the lay of the land. That is: really take the chance to look around and find something interesting about the display. Instead of photographing an entire painting, just shoot a detail. Instead of taking a picture of an entire aquarium, find one fish or groups of fish to photograph.
• Look for objects that are sitting still or moving slowly. Museums and aquariums are notoriously poorly lit and as such it can make photography extra difficult but not impossible. Photographing a stationary object or animal gives you more time to have the shutter open and therefore allow more light to hit the sensor.
• Make sure the flash is turned off.

As can be seen in this cell phone photo, leaving the flash on will result in a large bright spot in the image.

• Turn up the ISO setting. Even most point and shoot cameras allow for the adjustment of the camera’s ISO setting. This will cause the sensor to be more sensitive to the available light and therefore increase the amount of available light in the photograph. A word of caution on ISO adjustments: Increasing the ISO also increases the amount of noise in the photo. An ISO of 100 will produce a very clean photograph whereas an ISO of 1600 will produce a noisy or grainy photograph. If you must shoot with a very high ISO setting, consider shooting in Black and White. Grain in B/W photography is considered “Artsy” whereas grain in color photography can sometimes just ruin a shot.

While not shot through glass, this image was shot in very low light and I used an ISO of 12800. I chose to shoot this image in Black and White to prevent the noise from detracting from the final image.



Notice the magnified area of this image taken with a cell phone. The increased noise caused by the low light conditions can be clearly identified.




Here is the same image converted to Black and White. Notice that the digital noise is not as much of a distraction in the Black and White version.

• Hold your camera with both hands and keep your arms in close to your body. This will help you keep the camera still for longer exposures.
• If your camera or lens has vibration compensation be sure to turn it on.
• Shoot in Aperture priority mode if using a DSLR. Make sure you have an aperture setting that will get the portion of the object you are shooting in focus. This might be an f2 if you only want an animal’s eyes in focus or an f 4 - 8 if you want the entire scene in focus. Just remember the lower the number the longer the shutter speed is going to be.
• If you are using a point and shoot camera, check to see if you can set it for a low light or museum mode in leu of choosing a low aperture number.
• Get right up to the glass, without touching it.
• Use manual focus if available and if it is not, use the focus lock on your camera to select a focus point. To do this pick a focus point and then press your shutter button half way down. This will focus the image. When the spot you want to be in focus is in focus, gently press the shutter button the rest of the way down.
• Take lots of photos. However, be mindful of other guests and don’t hog up the displays.

If you follow these steps you will get some terrific shots. To prove it, here is a recent photo of a pike that I took while visiting the Cabela’s store near my home.



So, get out there and get to shooting, and most of all -- Enjoy.

Tags: Museum, Aquarium, Low Light, Reflections, Glass, Indoor photography, Manual Focus, Focus Lock, DSLR, Point and Shoot, Cell Phone