Photographing Christmas and Holiday Events

Well it’s that time of the year again, Christmas season. For some us that means trying to squeeze in some time to get out with the camera and shoot some of those special outdoor Christmas light displays or maybe it’s just getting photos of the family on Christmas day. A lot of you might be trying out that new camera with the hopes of getting some great photos. But either way, whether you are photographing the symbolic subjects of the holidays or your friends and family, getting creative with your composition certainly cannot hurt. This means that by paying special attention to how you organize the various elements in each photo, you too can create your own set of great holiday memories.


For Better Family and Group Portraits

 One of the most important things to keep in mind when photographing groups and families is this: you absolutely must take a lot of photos. There is often a great deal of pressure when photographing groups. A lot of people are uncomfortable having their picture taken and want the experience to be over quickly. Plus, you need to work quickly in order to get the job done (within the limits of their patience) and to try keep the experience as fun and friendly as possible. It seems like there is always someone blinking or looking off to the side or facing another member of the group. By having a large number of photos will improve your odds of catching everyone looking their best.

 
Shoot First, Ask Questions Later  

This tip is especially true if your subject is a child opening a gift or playing with a gift for the first time. We all know that within a split second, the whole scene can change. There are often just a few brief moments when that "magic spark" appears. Of course this means having your camera on hand and the batteries fully charged. Remember, its always a good idea to have back-up batteries ready also. After all, you can't capture the moment if you don't have your camera turned on and ready to go right?. Remember, you have to be ready to press that shutter button in a moment's notice, anticipating when the magic spark will surface. If you have a digital camera that suffers from a bit of a delay when taking the picture, then you will have to become even more intuitive and skilled at anticipating the moment. Another good tip; make sure you have enough space on your memory card and carry an extra card with you. Too often people will run out of space and either have to delete some photos or end their shooting for the day. Remember, these days’ memory cards are very inexpensive, so pick up an extra one and you’ll be glad you did. 

Fill Your Frame
 
One of the most common mistakes I see in Christmas photos (or any photo really) is that people often end up with shots of their subjects way off in the distance or on the other side of a room with lots of space all around them. One of the simplest tips I can give you is to just fill your frame with your subject. You do this two ways, either by using your zoom, or just getting up and moving yourself in closer. Easy huh? While this is one of the simplest tips I ever give it is one that can have the most profound impact on your shots. Try it out, you’ll be amazed.

Photographing Christmas Lights

The best time to shoot is before it gets totally dark, plus arriving around sunset will give you time to plan your shot before the good light happens. Try to compose your shots with as much sky as possible, getting down real low. It's always a good idea to be shooting in RAW mode, but if your not, remember to set your white-balance to Tungsten. All those little bulbs are tungsten balanced and as an added bonus your sky will look even better. Needless to say, you’ll need a way to steady your camera, preferably a tripod or mono-pod or even a beanbag for those long exposures. Plus a remote trigger or cable can come in real handy. Shoot a test shot every minute or so constantly checking the LCD. Sometime between sunset and full dark skies, your Christmas lights and the ambient light with start to mix beautifully. Usually you’ll have about a 10-minute window with nice light. After that, the good light will fade very quickly and you will know it is gone when your photos start looking like the "bad light" photos you used to take.  

Bonus Tips:

If you plan to use flash, nothing screams point-and-shoot like using a pop-up flash on-camera. We're not shooting motor vehicle photos right?  Red-eye reduction is nice, but a shoe-mounted flash is so much better if you own one and your camera has a hotshoe for it. When shooting indoors, not only can you bounce off of a wall or ceiling you can add a diffuser and make it hard to know a flash was used at all. Of course you might be able to avoid using flash at all by using a nice wide aperture like f2.8 or f/4 and bumping up your ISO a little, but a little fill-flash helps to lighten up your shadow areas and can really add some dimension to your photograph.

Remember, it’s always a good idea to plan ahead, maybe even making a check list of the things to remember like batteries, extra flash cards etc. Another good tip if your using a new camera, take some time and read (or re-read) your manual and get to know its buttons and features so you can use them even better. I can’t tell you how important this is.

Well until my next post, I hope you all have a very safe and happy holiday season and remember, as always, keep shooting and have some fun!

 

Tethered Shooting in Lightroom CC

These days, more and more people are shooting tethered. Maybe you’re asking yourself, what is tethered shooting and when or why would I want to shoot tethered?

For myself, I shoot tethered for a few different reasons, but mostly because I want to view my images on my monitor instead of the little LCD on the back of my camera. Plus, I set it up so I can also have my images loaded directly into a folder on the computer instead of filling up a memory card.

Image 1

This can be especially nice if your shooting portraits, because you can view your photos on the large monitor instantly and make sure you’ve got the shot correct immediately and share it with your subject or client right on the spot. A lot of times, the person your shooting will loosen up a little bit if they see what you’re doing and how the shots look.  This could also come in handy if you were working with an art director because they wouldn’t have to stop your session to view images on the cameras LCD screen.  

Sometimes I’ll shoot tethered when I’m home doing some Macro work. I’m a Canon shooter so most of the time when I’m doing Macro I prefer to use Live View with the Canon software because I can make finer adjustments like focusing, on the spot and see them on my laptop screen.

Some of you are already familiar with shooting tethered, and if you’ve done this in previous versions of Lightroom you’ll notice nothing has really changed, sorry.

For this tutorial I’m using my laptop connected to one of my cameras, in this case it’s a Canon Mk II, with a with a 15 foot USB cable. You might also want to secure your cord when tethering with a device called a Jerkstopper, but if you’re careful you shouldn’t have any problems. 

Image 2

To start a shooting tethered, go up under File scroll down to Tethered Capture and select Start Tethered Capture.    (see image 1)

When the Tethered Capture Settings dialog box opens you can customize this (pink boxes) and specify the name of the session, what template to use for incoming file names, where to store them and what metadata and keywords to use. In mine, I called my Session – New Blog Post, in the naming section I used Custom Name – Sequence and Custom Text called Fender Guitar and started numbering them from # 1.  Below that you’ll see I have a folder on my desktop called Tethered shooting as my Destination and I chose not to add any Metadata but put Samples for new Blog Post in the Keywords box.  Easy right?    ( see Image 2 )

When your  settings are all set, click OK to proceed.

This should put you in LR in the Library module and you’ll see the heads up display (HUD) for your tethered session. You’ll notice your camera model up in the top left corner, mine is a Canon EOS 5D Mark II and a big gray button on the other end.   

 ( Image 3 )

Image 3

Note:  If everything is connected but you get an error message “No Camera Detected”, you might need to adjust a settings on your camera. Check out your camera manual if you run into this problem.

On the HUD, you can set default develop setting to apply to your incoming images. Between the Tethered Settings dialog and this option on the HUD, you’ll get many of the same options that you would when importing them from your memory card. (see Image 3)

Now when you shoot you can use the shutter button on your camera (I prefer a cable release) or you can hit the big gray button on the HUD. Sometimes if my camera is on a tripod I’ll just use the gray button.

Now when you shoot, the images get loaded into the folder you chose and instead of previewing the image on the back of your camera, your laptop monitor becomes your LCD.

When you’re all done with your session, go up to File, Tethered Capture, Stop Tethered Capture. You can also just click the little X on the top right of the HUD if you want. You can see that Lightroom created a folder named after our session name called New Blog Post.  ( Image 4)

Basically that’s all there is to it. Your images are now sored in their own folder in your library and all ready for you to work on. I hope some of find this helpful.  Nice huh?­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­

Rememer, as always, keep shooting and have some fun!