12 Days of Better Christmas Photography - Day 12 - Put down the camera

Our last day, is probably one of the most important of all.

1. Make sure that you hand the camera to someone else once in a while. Even if you don't like how you look in photos, it's important that your kids, grandkids, ancestors know that you actually existed. No one says you have to make a billboard of them. Just acknowledge that you were there too.

AND...

2. Put down the camera.

Yep. It's true. It's ok to not photograph every millisecond of your holiday. Enjoy the moment, and just let it go. Sometimes life is a little drab, through the eyepiece of a camera.


I hope you have enjoyed our "12 days of better Christmas Photography" series. I had a lot of fun creating it for you! Have a blessed holiday!

12 Days of Better Christmas Photography - Day 11 - Before and After

{Sorry about the double day! Somehow I missed a day in there somewhere! I meant to be done on Christmas eve, so we'll have a double day today!}



There's always a little bit of fun and magic in before and after photos. Of course, the before and after in weight loss is always a favorite, or maybe before and after a haircut. However, before and after a divorce is probably not so "magical".

Try to capture some before and afters this year!

1. Before and after a snowfall. Pick a spot and photograph it before the snow comes and then stand in the same spot again. Make some fun of it and stand in that spot all four seasons.
2. Before and after opening the gifts. I ALWAYS get a photo of the tree with all it's gifts packed under it, but sometimes I forget to get a photo of the paper, box and unwrapping chaos
3. Before and after decorating (or undecorating) the tree.
4. Before and after Christmas dinner. The beautiful meal laid out before, and the sky high pile of dishes after.
5. Before and after - the look of your kids faces as they wake up, and then see the presents.

I'm sure you can probably think of a hundred more before and after shots, that would be loads of fun displayed next to each other in your albums!

I hope you are enjoying the 12 Days of Better Christmas Photography series, next, we will talk about probably the most important tip of all!

12 Days of Better Christmas Photography - Day 10 - Group shots!

It's been an unbearably bad day.
Let's just say, new furnace??!!?? Merry Christmas to me!


I planned on writing a great post about group shots of your family, but instead I'll share this link that says pretty much what I was going to say!

12 tips to take a great group photo

12 Days of Better Christmas Photography - Day 9 - Custom White Balance

I've been thinking for a long time that I would give a lesson on Custom White Balance but had not had a time to do it yet. I've had requests for it so I know it's time!

However, I realized that it's probably something that would be better told via video than trying to just type it out. I found a great explanation on youtube produced by Adorama.

Just ignore how much he talks with his hands. ;)

12 Days of Better Christmas Photography - Day 8 - Get a real camera!

This post for 12 days of Better Christmas photography, probably should have been day ONE. I think it's a great first step into better photos. It's also a personal pet peeve.

If your only camera is in your phone, then you have a crappy camera. Now, having said that, I know that there are some apps out there for smart phones that create some cool effects on photos. Period. I even saw recently an article that featured photos in Afganistan taken with the iphone. I'm ok with that.

*however*

If you spend .0002 seconds on facebook, you'll see that there's some really crappy cellphone photos floating about.

{We try on funny hats when we go antiquing. It might be funny, but it's still a crappy photo}

I found this great list of questions to think about when shopping for a new camera here.

Camera Type

• Are you looking for a compact point & shoot camera, a DSLR, or something in between? (Or perhaps you haven't decided yet — that's okay!)

• Is this your first camera? First ever, or first digital?

• Are you interested in a high level of control, or would you prefer to let the camera do as much "thinking" as possible?

• If you had to choose, would you prefer a more versatile (large "×") zoom lens, or top-notch image quality with no zoom at all?

• What size of camera do you want? To what degree would you be willing to sacrifice other features for compactness?

Budget

• What budget have you allocated for buying this camera? Please be as specific as possible.

• Do you plan to spend more on additional accessories now or in the future? (Lenses, lighting, tripods, batteries, memory cards, camera bags... it adds up!)

• How long do you plan on keeping this new camera?

Usage

• What will you generally use the camera for?

• Are you going to photograph sports? What sport, and from how far away?

• Will you be shooting a lot of indoor photos, or other low-light photos?

• Will you make prints, or primarily view and share images on a computer screen? If you make prints, will they typically be small (up to 5×7") or medium sized (8×10"), or are you interested in larger sizes as well?

• Are you interested in spending time post-processing to make an image "perfect", or would you prefer to use images basically straight from the camera?

Miscellaneous

• Are there particular lenses or technical features that are interesting or important to you?

• Are there particular brands or models you already have in mind?

Now, I can't personally recommend any one camera if you answer all the questions above. I suggest you write down your answers and talk to sales people, do some research online, ask your friends. Most of all, pick up the camera and hold it in your hands. Does it feel right?

If you decide to go with a DSLR, but have a small budget, don't worry, you can still make that happen. eBay has great deals on used dslr cameras. Look for cameras that have low acutations. shop at night time. Look for buy it now deals. Look at the cameras that you are interested in in the "completed auctions" section and see what they are going for to know if you're getting a good deal or not.

This is how I shop for my equipment and I always pay less than anyone else.

12 Days of Better Christmas Photography - Day 7 - Shaped Bokeh

What is bokeh anyway? I know you're asking this question. It's pronouced "bow-kuh" for starters and it's those little round (usually) dots of out of focus light that speckle the background of kick butt shots. You might see it in the background of dappled light under a tree in the summertime, but in the winter you will probably see it in the background as your subject sits in front of the Christmas tree.


So here's how to get bokeh.

1. Set your dslr to either aperture priority or manual
2. If you are using a zoom lens, zoom in as close as you can go.
3. Set your aperture to as wide open as it will go. My favorite lens is a 35mm F2. If I use a lens that's f4, etc, I do get bokeh but it's not the large spots, they are much smaller, but it does work
4. You should be much closer to your subject, but there needs to be space between your subject and the background. The farther you can get away from your lit background, the better. We're not talking a half mile ok?
5. Dappled light, such as Christmas tree lights, far-away street, city and car lights, dappled light through trees, sun reflecting from water or sand just right, busy give you the bokeh dots.

For point & shoot: if you aren't able to set your aperture manually, try the portrait and macro modes on your camera. You can use the macro mode even if you're not shooting macro. These auto modes give you wide apertures.

OK, But how do you get those hearts??

{great photo by someone that's not me}

Well, I didn't think there was much point in rewriting a great tutorial, so I'm sending you the link to try it yourself. I honestly haven't tried it yet, I always forget until I'm shooting and think "I wish I had one of those heart bokeh things"

If you don't want to take the time to make it yourself photojojo has a kit that does it all for you! With tons of shapes! (no I don't get paid for that product placement but dammit I should!)

Consider this a warning tho... Bokeh is addictive.
Proceed with caution

12 Days of Better Christmas Photography - Day 6 - Shooting snow

Some of the photos I seem most disappointed in every winter, are photos of snow. No matter how hard I would try for years, the outcome would be muddy and gray photos that really didn't reflect what I was actually seeing.

Why is this happening!?

Well, the answer is simple. The snow is so white, and so bright, that it's tricking the camera's meter into thinking that it's getting a lot of light and therefore underexposes the image to compensate.

Tricky camera!

There are a couple ways to try to fix this problem.

Option#1:

You get home from your weekend in Aspen at the lodge (happens to me all the time) and realize all your photos look like the one above. Pretty crappy. 90% of ppl will toss this photo and be annoyed they paid .29 for a 4x6 that's going in the trash can.

Here's how to fix the problem if it's ALREADY happened (before you print btw)... I took this photo last winter and wanted to kind of show how deep the snow was. BTW, there was a lot last year. I'm glad we're looking at a mild winter so far.

So anyway, I pulled the image into photoshop adjusted the levels by moving the sliders....
Example:

Here is the before snapshop of levels, and below is the after.

Carefully play with these levels until you get the right amount of dark and light to create enough contrast in your image. Not enough, and the image is too dark, too much, and the image blows out and loses details.

Voila!

aka this is why God made photoshop.

You can now see how I "saw" the image in my head. I might actually play with it a little more, as it still feels a little on the dark side, but I didn't want to blow out the texture of the snow. As you can see, I left the blue cast to it, but that's a personal choice. I like snow having that "blue" look to it, it makes it look colder in my opinion. Again, you can remove some of this color yourself.

If you don't have photoshop, do not sweat it! I know, it's an expensive program. There's cheaper options like Paint shop Pro (which is awesome), and there's a free option called Gimp. But whatever you do, please don't edit your photos in picnik..... it's just *bad* and they look crappy.

Option #2 is Exposure Compensation

This option is for those people that think ahead, unlike myself. So before you hit the slopes, think ahead about what your scene will look like. Lots of white snow. Lots.

Your camera meter measures the light in a scene and tries to evaluate the average of all the tones. Again, all that snow is very white and very bright and tricks the camera into thinking that too much light is coming in so we must underexpose the image to get the "proper exposure".

Your DSLR may have modes like center weighted average or spot metering which try to compensate for issues like this, but sometimes even that is not good enough for the camera. You will need to manually "trick" it into exposing properly.

This is called exposure compesation and your camera will probably have a simliar display like below where you can ask your camera to underexpose (make it darker) or overexpose (make it lighter) by 1/3rd stop intervals. My canon, lets you under/over expose by 2 full stops either direction.

To expose the snow, try pushing your slider to the right and increase your exposure. Experiment, but you will probably be in the +1-+2 full stop range. Each dot between the numbers indicates 1/3 of a stop, so if 2 seems to much, and 1 is to little, try 1.3 and see what happens. Do not depend solely on your lcd screen. I find that if mine seems properly exposed, that often times it's a little on the dark side when I get home.

Also, don't go too crazy with this method because your images will be over exposed. You can always add a little light, but once the details are blown out, they can never be recovered. Also keep in mind that you can use this method for more than just snow. I often times find that if I'm trying to shoot up into the sky (at birds, or such) that they are often over exposed.

Don't forget to put the exposure back to the middle when you get home, or you'll end up with a bunch of over/under exposed images.

{This image was taken last night, as it snowed, looking up at the street light in our yard.
The starburst came from a snowflake that landed on my lens.}

The same way that over exposure works, under exposure works too. So if you're taking an evening shot, and the camera is trying to overexpose it to compensate for the lack of light, you can turn down your exposure compensation to -1 to -2 stops, whatever works best for your scene.

Which do I prefer?

Well, thinking about it now, I think I personally prefer option #1. Mainly for 2 reasons, first, I don't remember to set it when I'm out in the field and like I said, my images tend to look lighter on my lcd screen so I think I'm ok. Secondly, by being underexposed a bit, I don't lose that much detail. When I overexpose, I do it up right and tend to blow things out. I would rather gently pull it up in the computer.

What if I have a point and shoot?

Well, again, read your manual! You may have a mode specifically for snow. Manufactures know this is a problem so they are trying to compensate to make photography easier for you! You may also have a meter in your camera, but that is much less likely. If you have neither, then all is not lost, work on cleaning up those photos when you get home.

Other Winter photo tips:

1. Be prepared for cold weather. This means if you're in your back yard, wear gloves and don't stay out too long. Thin warm gloves are best. You won't be able to operate your camera with big thick mittens. You'll take them off and your hands will get colder faster - and run the risk of frostbite which happens quickly.
2. If you're going snowshoeing, then talk to the outdoorsy snowshoe people about what you need to get where you're going so we don't have to dig out your frozen corpse out of a snowbank.. ok?
3. If you're walking straight outside from the house to shoot, your lens is going to fog up. Please give it some time to cool down and don't rub your lenses as you might scratch them, and honestly it won't help a darn bit anyway.
4. Keep your batteries warm. Digital camera batteries (well, all batteries) go dead faster when they are cold. Keep a set in your pocket next to your body to keep them warm.
5. Keep your camera protected if you're shooting in the snow, especially a wet snow. This can be as simple ans tearing a hole in a grocery sack for your lens to fit through. Water+electronics=Bad Juju

I know a million photographers out there might disagree with me, and that's ok, I still think you're awesome and probably pretty cute too. I'm only sharing here how *I* do things and what works for me. If you have any other methods, by all means please share! Links are cool, bad attitudes are not!

12 Days of Better Christmas Photography - Day 5 - better photos shooting indoors

You have a couple options:

1. No flash:

When you can, turn off your flash and turn on lights or shoot near a window and use the natural light. Natural light is ideal for photography you will have truer colors and the light will be softer. Do not face toward the window yourself or you'll end up with a silhouette. Instead, you need to be somewhere between your subject, and the window.

Without flash, you might have to embrace the yellow cast of incandescent lights, and/or a little blur until you get better at photography (there are ways to compensate that we will talk about later!) In a way, I kind of like that yellow cast that you get from regular raw light bulbs, I think it gives a warm feeling to some photos.

Don't forget, that even on some point and shoots, you can raise your ISO to make the camera more sensitive to light. The higher the number the more sensitive it is. However, often the higher the number, the more grain/loss of quality the image has, so there is a fine balance. You can pull beautiful photos at a much lower light so read your manual and figure out how to change your ISO.

Tanner opening gifts.
Left: Natural light coming from the window facing north (it's a blue light)
Right: Incandescent light from a lamp (it's a yellow light)
I just embraced it and left it as is.


2. Flash:

The flash can be a real lifesaver, no doubt about it. The artificial light can mean the difference between a pretty good photo and a trash can photo. However, most light from flash units, in particular those on point and shoots, causes harsh flat light.

If you have a DSLR with an external flash unit, your best option is to bounce the light off of a wall or the ceiling. Practice! If you can't bounce your flash (or you have no external), you can diffuse the light coming out of your flash by making a diffuser out of a piece of tissue or a napkin. It really does work! This will cause the light to spread, instead of going straight at your subject and your shadows will be much softer.


Don't Forget:
Don't just let your other lessons we've learned go willy nilly indoors. Remember to crop in camera and watch your backgrounds!


Saturday's lesson will probably come Sunday morning! I have a wedding - I doubt she'd like me blogging instead of shooting! BRIDES today! I swear. ;)

12 Days of Better Christmas Photography - Day 4 - Be Prepared

Are you prepared to take photos this Christmas? Plan ahead and you won't be disappointed with your results!

1. Don't forget to take your camera! (I've done this plenty!)
2. Keep fresh batteries in your bag, don't forget to recharge them.
3. Jot a list of photos you'd like to capture so you don't forget.
4. Are you going to need a flash?
5. Think about the light ahead of time, and remember to set your white balance (I'll give a lesson on this!)
6. Think about your surroundings before you shoot. Try to avoid picture frames growing out of grandma's head.
7. Do you have enough memory cards with you?

Now, for you memory impared people out there (can I hear a whatwhat!), You know who you are! You need to hit Ctrl +p and print this out. Sit it on TOP of your purse or camera bag so you don't forget.

That's my advice anyway, not that I ever have to do stuff like that. I never forget.

Ever.
:p

12 Days of Better Christmas Photography - Day 3 - 25 things to shoot at Christmas time

Today's tip is all about the details.

Sure, everyone has pics of their kids opening their gifts on Christmas morning, or maybe everyone sitting around eating dinner, but you're doing a disservice to your holiday memories. Are you going to be able to remember the hat that grandma wore to church? You'll soon forget that your little boy absolutely swam in those pajamas 2 years ago, that you threw away last week because they are now 2 sizes to small.

I've always made a point of taking a photo of my kids with their gifts on Christmas morning. Why? Because my favorite photo of me as a child on Christmas, I was sitting in a corner holding 2 toys I received that Christmas day. I likely would have forgotten those toys and the hours of entertainment had mom not taken that photo of me. I want my kids to have a memory prompt 30 years from now, about their Christmas in 2010.

Earlier this week we talked about getting in close, cropping in camera to get better shots. I want you to use that lesson to get pics of the little details of what makes Christmas special for your family.

In case you get a little stage fright, here's a list of prompts that might help you remember your camera!

25 Things this Christmas you don't want to forget to Photograph!

1. The gifts wrapped under the tree
2. Cookies and Milk for Santa
3. The stockings on the mantle
4. The weather outside that morning
5. The tree lit the night before
6. Kids sleeping on Christmas eve
7. Reading Christmas stories
8. What you made for breakfast on Christmas morning
9. Christmas morning pajamas
10. Your pets and any gifts they get
11. Your kid (or you!) posed with your gifts received
12. The look on their faces as they see the tree on Christmas morning
13. Special baked goodies
14. Gifts that you handmade, or special gifts you received
15. Decorating the tree and hanging the lights
16. Your house lit up
17. Your church at Christmas eve services
18. Wrapping gifts
19. Your favorite ornaments
20. Your fuzzy slippers - or your kids - or both!
21. Letters to santa - and letters back
22. The table filled with all the good eats for dinner - cue Norman Rockwell
23. Class parties - office parties
24. Your special Christmas outfits (parties, church, etc)
25. A Group shot, even if that means doing the duck face, with no makeup and messy hair

{"Baking" Christmas treats}

{Left: Breakfast on Christmas morning, Right: Some of my decor}

{Homemade pancake mix jars that I gave as gifts}

Only one of these photos looks like a "Christmas" photo. Don't feel like every image you create needs to include some holly leaves or the Christmas tree. There are hundreds of memories happening, that have no specific holiday "feel" to them. Does that mean they are not holiday memories??

Merry Christmas, and please share your photo links with me!

12 Days of Better Christmas Photography - Day 2

Our second lesson is about photographing Christmas lights. I personally promise, that this is one of those things that has kicked my butt for YEARS. It's so hard to translate to "film" what our eye sees when it comes to Christmas lights. Well, any night lit scene including skylines, etc.



I was thinking about this assignment on the way to Tanner's Christmas concert and saw the tree next to the President's house at the university. It was huge and perfect.

I decided to approach this how the average person would. It's dark, it needs to be lighter, and I probably have my camera on full auto.

Now, let me explain how this works. There are 3 legs to photography. ISO, Shutter Speed, and Aperture. Each plays an important part of how much light will enter the camera and expose the "film". Someday we'll go into each step in depth, but today I'll touch lightly on each one.

ISO: how sensitive the camera is to surrounding light. Low # for brighter days, higher # for darker days. BUT, you don't want to push it to the highest ISO always when it's dark, because the higher the #, the more grainy your photo is. On my 50d, the grain is very ugly, not even a pretty "noise" so I run as low of an ISO as possible.

Aperture: (or f-stop) this is how wide the lens opens to allow in light. The wider the aperture, the more light that is entering the camera. (this also decreases the depth of field, but that's a different lesson). So now you can see why lenses with the widest apertures, cost the most money!

Shutter Speed: This is how quickly or how slowly the lens will open to expose the "film". The longer it's open, the more light comes into the camera.

The down side to all of this is one thing. If you're going to be doing low light photography, your shutter speed WILL be long. This is something you won't be able to do handheld so you'll need to either invest in a tripod, or steady your camera on a solid surface - like your car hood. You don't have to spend a lot of money. This summer we found 3 really nice tripods. 2 at garage sales, and one at an antique store. Total investment in all 3? $4.00

If you don't want to hit the swap meet looking for something (and if you're just doing this for fun, don't spend $300 on a tripod please!), you can just get a gorilla pod, or something as simple as a bag of beans will work too! Keep in mind, if you use your car hood, make sure the car is OFF. The vibrations will give you a blurry shot.

So now you can see why there's a delicate balance between the three settings. There's no one setting that's perfect for most situations. In another lesson someday (I promise) I'll teach you how to determine which setting is the most important, but in the meantime, we're going to focus on what works for this situation.

I already knew I wanted the lowest ISO possible because I don't want my photo to be grainy, so I chose ISO 400. I also know that I want to allow in as much light as possible. That leaves the one other leg - shutter speed. I can play with these 3 options to get the optimum look, but the main number I will be adjusting will be the shutter speed.

*note: for all of these shots I'm using a 35mm lens.

I swear, it's going to be less boring soon, are you still awake?? LOL

I set my camera on full auto meaning I had no control over any of the outcome at all. What I got, is what the camera decided that I would get. My flash fired of course, which lights up the foreground and the lights are under exposed.

{F 3.5, ISO 400, 1/60th sec and the flash fired}

Looks like crapola doesn't it? Now I've set the standard of what *not* to do. Let's try experimenting a bit shall we?

{F 2, ISO 400, 1/6th sec and no flash}

This is much closer to the image that I am trying to produce, but I already see a problem, which I'll explain in a moment.

{F 2, ISO 400, 1/3th sec and no flash}

It's around here that I realize that the street light next to the tree is going to be a problem. The longer I expose for the christmas lights, the longer I'm also exposing for the street light. It's causing the tree to be washed out. I decide that this is not the image I was looking for, so I'll go try elsewhere.



I drove around until I found a house with no streetlights, and I need to say, Maryville, get on the ball... took me forever to find a house with more than a string of lights across the gutter.

You know... like my house.

{F 2.8, ISO 400, 1/60th sec and the flash fired}

I started the process again. See how the foreground is lit, and the lights are dim? Doesn't do a bit of justice for this pretty little house.

{F 2, ISO 400, 1/6th sec and no flash}

Again, not bad, but I really want to pick up that the lights are "aglow" and you really can't see that in this pic.

{F 2, ISO 400, 1/3rd sec and no flash}

You can see now, that I have my camera set to 1/3rd of a second which is pretty long in photography. If I didn't have the tripod, even standing as still as possible, this would be a huge blur. This is also close to what I want in the image. Longer is over exposing the lights. The house would look good, but the lights would be a big white blob.



So I did what I sometimes do, and that is to take the image home, and put it through photoshop to give it a little more light.

This is the above image, but in PS, I adjusted the levels adding a little more light.


OK, now I know that was all very "technical" and more than most people will do for Christmas lights with their point and shoot.

Let me give you some advice in that department. You can do some amazing things with a point and shoot. READ YOUR MANUAL!! If you Lost your manual, like I always do, then you can google your brand & model name + "manual" and you can probably find it online. Bookmark it! Because there are an infinite amount of cameras, I can't give you advice on how to use each model.

Most P&S will let you turn off the flash. Try doing that first. Use your bag of beans to steady your camera on your hood. Some advanced P&S will let you set your ISO, shutterspeed, etc. Again, if you can, then the above rules apply to you!


Additional information:

There is a really good article on Strobist (a site for off camera flash enthusiasts) about taking photos of christmas lights at night. It focuses more on the time of day, and using some ambient light to fill in some of your structures.

It's sort of along the lines of how I did this photo:

- Here is another article on SLRPhotography that focuses more on shooting lights at night.


Hopefully, you are not asleep now.
*poke*

If you are, then you can print this out and use it for a liner in your birdcage. If you're awake, then let's have a private party and talk about those that chose not to make it to the end. They are like the amish, they'll never know we were talking about them!

Tomorrow, we're going to talk about the details of Christmas!


If you're enjoying the "12 days", please click the follow button over to the right side of the screen. You can also click on the "12 days of photography" tag at the end of this post to see all 12 days at any time.

12 Days of Better Christmas Photography - Day 1

Our very first 12 days of Better Christmas photography "classes". My goal is to make sure you have better Christmas photos you will be proud to share.


Day one is all about composition. More specifically, it's about getting closer. This is one of the downfalls of handing your camera to a stranger (or even a relative) to take your photo. Not only do they look at my DSLR like a monkey looking at a football, 9 times out of 10, they take 3 steps backwards and you get a horrible shot.

Sadly, I've seen a lot of people take their own photos that way.

Here's an example:

In this photo, I want to share with my readers that I have a growing antique deer collection I put out at Christmas time. I approached it like I might have 15 years ago. I step back, and get a shot of the whole scene on top of my hutch in my dining room.

It's distracting isn't it? Not only can you not see the deer very well, but the large pic above and the pic on the easel distracts from the story I want to tell.

So here's what I did:

I get closer to the scene, from a different angle. I crop out *in camera* most of the items I don't want to be seen. However you still see the little church and Christmas trees. They play a supporting role, so you can see that it's Christmas time, but the photo says "gee Lana likes deer, man does she have an issue."

I stepped in even closer and told another story:

All the focus is on one little deer. The story says "there are many deer, but this is the favorite one." Although to be fair, I'm not sure it is. That's like saying, "which kid is my favorite" (*cough*jingles*cough*)




Let's try it again:

This is better than the original photo. You get that it's a Christmas scene still, that I like vintage decor, and quirky old "little people" but that's about it.

By coming in close, and using the church as a backdrop, I'm telling the story about the quirky little people, and including them in my christmas scenes, even tho they are not Christmas decor.

To be fair, all three photos are ok, I just happen to think the last two have more character to them.

Remember, that ALL PHOTOS are good photos if you are there to take them, *print them* (don't store them on your card or phone only), and remember them forever. We're just working on making clearer memories.

Check back tomorrow. We'll be talking about photographing Christmas lights. (This one kicked my butt for YEARS - and sometimes still does!)