Tips for Successful Holiday photographs | Jessica Lloyd Photography | Photo Tips | How To

It's getting really close to Christmas, so I thought I'd share a few tips to help you get better pics.


1. Take the camera with you. :)  Be sure to have the battery charged or take extras.  Same goes for memory cards. Most of our Holiday pictures are taken inside or out in the dark night.  Be sure you have a flash and use it (bounce it if you can or use a diffuser to soften it).

2. Assign someone to take pictures.  You know how you divide up the food assignments and activities?  Do the same with pictures.

3. White Balance.  Do you ever get pictures where the color is just off?  Maybe the walls are yellow or blue instead of the white they really are.  It's the white balance.  Most cameras have a setting for white balance and the icons typically look like a sun, clouds, a light bulb, etc. That's your white balance.  If your auto white balance isn't getting the colors right you need to set it manually.  So if you are in a house with incandescent lighting, choose the corresponding setting.  If you are in an office/church with florescent lighting, pick that one.  If it still doesn't work out, you can always fix it in post processing, but that's a whole other tutorial.

4. What to photograph?  Besides everyone at the party?  The food.  The preparations.  The decorations (use the macro setting).  The gifts. The baby throwing a tantrum.  Declutter you images by choosing one thing to be the focal point and fill the frame.  Christmas pictures can be overwhelming because there is so much going on in them.  Instead of taking a picture of the whole event taking place, get the parts individually.  When you take pictures of opening presents, use the burst setting to take multiple shots at once, that way you won't miss those great fleeting expressions.

5. Christmas lights are fun, but they can be tricky to get them to look good in pictures.  The time of the day is key here.  Too late and all you get are the lights and everything else goes black.  Too early and the lights don't show up at all. Sunset is prime. Compose so that you get lots of sky and shoot from a low angle (lay in the snow and have someone take a picture of you taking a picture LOL).  Use the Tungsten white balance setting, if you have one.  It will make the lights pop and give your sky an beautiful royal blue color.  You'll need to use a long shutter speed and no flash, so a tripod or a bean bag to balance the camera on will be helpful. If that's not available, use both hands and brace yourself on something.  Once you've got the setup all right, take shots about every two minutes until the light is just right. It will happen somewhere between when sunset starts and dark.  That's a very short window of time, so you'll need to get set up either a bit before sunset, or really quickly.  The best time to get this shot is before when they look the best to your eye, so don't worry about missing out on the view because you've been messing with your camera, you'll get to see the best lights.

6. Group photos are best taken at the beginning of an event when everyone is fresh and still cooperative, before the kids are tired and cranky.

Happy Shooting!