How to Take Great Pictures of Your Christmas Lights

You asked for it!! So, I thought I might try my best to explain it.... so....here goes.

The very most important first thing you need to do is to TURN OFF YOUR FLASH. So, if you aren't going to be using your flash, you will need to have some extra light in the room. Try taking pictures of your lit up Christmas tree just as the sun is starting to go down so that you still have some ambient light in the room, but your tree is already starting to look all sparkly and shimmery!

If your pictures turn out blurry, it's because your shutter speed is too slow.   The cure for this is more light.  If you are able to use the manual setting on your camera, to speed up your shutter you can either take your aperture down, or your ISO up.   I explain this a little better in Photography 101 and Photography 101 Part Two. (Scroll all the way down).

Sunset time is also a great time to take pictures of your outside decorations too.   There is still plenty of ambient light, but your Christmas lights are starting to shine... perfect!

Click over to At The Well to see one of my pictures of Christmas lights featured, along with the digital scrapbooking talents of Carrie from Live, Learn, and Love Together.  !!    To take a photo similar to the one that was featured, I simply set my camera to manual, and set the exposure accordingly.

Happy Snapping!!

PHOTOGRAPHY 101 - PART ONE

I get asked many questions about my photography, so I thought doing a series of posts on some of these common questions would be a great idea! First of all - I do need to say that I am a completely natural light photographer. I do not have a studio, I know very little about studio lighting. But I have learned quite a lot about using natural light, which is of course, my favorite kind of photography. Natural light lends a quality of "realness" to an image - it freezes a picture in our minds of exactly what we saw. For today, I'm going to just cover the basics. (Please pardon my squished together paragraphs - blogger isn't cooeperating).

Q: The question I get asked the most is "What kind of camera and lenses do you have?"

A: I am a Canon girl - I started with a Canon 40D, which is now my back up camera, and I now use the Canon 5D Mark II. I have only two lenses - the Canon 50 mm 1.4 which is super for low light situations because of the 1.4 ap. In general, a prime lens (meaning it doesn't zoom - your feet do that part!) gives a very crisp sharp image for not a whole lot of $$$. This is a good place for a new photographer to start with a lens. The eye sees at a range of 50 mm, making this lens a great starter lens. The other lens I use which rarely leaves my camera is the Canon 24-70 2.8 L series . I can't say enough about this amazing lens! I had to work for a few years before I could justify the expense of this one, but it most definitely has been worth the money. (I most certainly have a wish list of other lenses that I would like to have - but these are working just fine for now).

HOWEVER, the first point I want to stress is that anyone can take great pictures - you DO NOT need any expensive equipment. It's very easy to fall into the trap as novice photographers of thinking that we need better equipment to take better pictures. My advice to you is to find a camera that you can easily get to the controls that you need to use. There are a few things that you need to be able to readily access on your camera if you want to get serious about the art of photography - aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and focal points. If you have to search and dig through your menu on your camera, then you won't be able to snap a picture at the right settings quick enough. Starting with a basic digital SLR camera such as the Canon Rebel is more than sufficient to be able to learn photography. And when coupled with a really good lens, I have seen some incredible images come from a very basic camera.

Q: I want to learn how to take incredible pictures - where do I start?

A: Get ready for this one - SET YOUR CAMERA COMPLETELY TO MANUAL. This will, in fact, make you want to throw your camera out the window repeatedly when you first start. I'm not kidding. But this is the single most important piece of advice I received when I started to jump into this photography thing with both feet. On a Canon - the little dial at the top with the "M" on it - this is what you want.

This is the only, only way to really understand how everything works together inside your camera. It will also help you understand why taking pictures in the automatic modes never quite turn out the way you would like. Although - I always keep my lens set at automatic focus (to answer Hannah's question who struggles with manual focus). I do select "where" I want to focus, but I let the lens do the focusing for me. We will talk more on focus later. When you take a picture in an automatic mode, inside your camera is a light meter and it takes into account all the light and dark areas in the image you are about to take and it decides what ap, shutter speed, and ISO to use. Your brain is MUCH smarter than your cameras brain. When you have complete control over everything your camera is doing, you will have a much better outcome. However, in order to get even close to getting a correct exposure while in the manual setting, you have to understand three main things. Aperture, shutter speed, and ISO, and how all three of them work together. Now - I'm not claiming to be an expert on this, but I just wanted to share with you what I do know - and hopefully be able to help you understand it better. So, go dust off your camera manual and start learning!!

APERTURE: This is the term for the opening that determines the amount of light admitted - technically. But I like to desribe it as, photographically speaking, the lower the number of aperture you use (a really, really low ap would be 1.4 on the lens mentioned above) means the smaller the area of your image that will be in focus. Using a low aperture makes the beautiful bokeh (the blurriness in the background) that is desirable in portrait photography.

But, say you were taking a family portrait, and you needed 4-6 faces all in focus at the same time, then you will want to use a much higher aperture - around 6.0 or higher. The lower the number on your aperture, the smaller area of focus you will have (this also gets into depth of field which we will talk more about later), and the less light you need. With a higher aperture, more of your image will be in focus, less pretty bokeh in the background.

SHUTTER SPEED: Let's move on to shutter speed. Shutter speed is defined as the amount of time the shutter stays open while taking a photograph. You can see in this picture that the lower the number of the shutter speed, the more blur you are likely to have. In this picture, the shutter stayed open for 1/10 of a second, which is a pretty long time for a shutter to be open. Notice I am inside in a rather dark hallway with light coming in behind the subject. Not an ideal place for a picture spot.

Now in this picture, which is obviously outside in bright sunshine, I allowed my shutter speed to be 1/320 of a second. This is a much, MUCH shorter time for the shutter to be open, therefore "freezing" my twirling subject. (This little sweetie does LOVE to twirl - such a willing subject).

ISO: The third important factor to understand is ISO. The best way to think of ISO is waaaaay back when we all used to buy actual film for our cameras - remember choosing either 100 when you would be shooting in bright light, or maybe spending more and going for a 400 or an 800 film that was able to produce much better quality under low light situations? This is pretty much ISO. (Which stands for International Standards Organisation if you are interested). The cool thing about digital SLR cameras, is that if you want to change your ISO - you don't have to change your whole roll of film!! Isn't technology great? If I am shooting outside, I pretty much always have my ISO at it's lowest setting, 100. If the light is starting to fade and I am already at the lowest shutter speed available for getting proper exposure of my subject without motion blur, then this is when my ISO will come in handy. I can bump up my ISO to 200, 400, 800 or even higher - (my spiffy 5D lets me take my ISO up sky-high and still get good quality). Bumping up the ISO will allow you to use a higher shutter speed to make sure your subject is in focus without motion blur. The drawback to using a higher ISO is that you will start to get "noise" in your image - also known as that grainy look, which sometimes can be a pretty cool thing.

So - let me try to sum up how these three things work together. Shutter speed and aperture are buddies - these are your two main components of getting a correct exposure (meaning not too light and not too dark, with accurate color). ISO can be their friend to help them get along better - he can help out when you have a low light situation.

Reading the book Understanding Exposure by Brian Peterson is a great read for trying to understand how all these things work together. This book is what finally made it "click" for me (pun most definitely intended). Your goal in photography is always trying to get correct exposure. YOU need to be the one to do that - not your camera. Your camera is not as smart as it thinks it is.

Another important thing to remember when learning to shoot natural light in manual - turn off your flash, turn off your flash, turn off your flah (yep - talkin to you Petro!!) :) You can't learn the beauty of natural light if you are adding in artificial light. After you have mastered the basics of photography, then adding in additional light sources can be beneficial. This is really tricky - and I'm still learning this one myself.

One final thing that is so, so easy to understand and implement and can make a HUGE difference in your photographs beginning today is a little thing called the Rule of Thirds. You may have learned about this in an art class at some point. And sometimes when you look through your camera, you may even see a little grid like this right on your screen. The human eye is naturally drawn to these four points of an image. Our tendency is to want to center everything perfectly when taking a picture. This is usually a no-no. NO-NO!! Don't do that. Unless it's a very close up picture, centering a subject in an image makes it very boring, not interesting, just flat out dull. Instead - try to get your subject at one of these four points. Or if there is more than one subject in your image - using two of these points works very well also.

See how in this image if I had this beautiful girl right in the middle - it just wouldn't be quite as interesting? There is some space there in the direction she is looking which gives our minds a little more to think about as we look as this image. Make sense?

I know this probably seems like a lot of information - and maybe even very confusing. It took me several months of studying these components to understand how they work individually and together. But it really will be worth learning! I promise! I knew NOTHING about any of these things just a few years ago, and was able to completely teach myself just by learning these things myself. A couple of photography forums that really, really helped me to learn were:

http://www.ilovephotography.com/ and http://www.clickinmoms.com/

PLUS - I made myself take at least one picture a day for a year with my camera in manual. If you are committed to learning the art of photography - you can do it!!

Stay tuned for Part Two and beyond, where we will discuss: getting correct exposure, understanding white balance, composition, using focal points, getting sharp focus, reading the light, bouncing flash, finding the light, post-processing and lots more!!

I'm still taking photography related questions - feel free to leave questions in the comments section.

PHOTOGRAPHY 101 - PART TWO

Okay - time for part two. Let's talk about exposure. I think this was the biggest thing that I struggled with (and actually still do), getting perfect exposure. If you have sort of wrapped your brain around the three main components, aperture, shutter speed, and ISO - then it's time to start to working on proper exposure. Exposure can be defined as making sure the image is perfect, not too light, not too dark, no "blown highlights" (meaning the light in a certain spot is so bright that recorded information is lost). Here is an example of blown highlights...

And the same thing with losing the details in the dark spots - the underexposure is such that you lose details..... example...
So -how do I get a proper exposure? See this little ticker-thingy right here on the screen of my camera?



That shows you whether or not you are getting proper exposure. The way you get this little ticker guy to move is by adjusting your aperture and your shutter speed until they find a common ground (or have your ticker in the middle). Let's say you have selected an ap of say 4.0 with a shutter speed of 200, and arrived at correct exposure. Then you can also change this by adjusting each of these two things a "stop" up or down, and still have proper exposure. For example, you decide to narrow your aperture, to get some nice bokeh, then you move your ap down 2-3 stops, while adjusting your shutter speed accordingly 2-3 stops. Your goal is to always have that at the mid-point. In this example, it is exactly in the middle - this shows proper exposure. Now - even though that is the goal - there are times, many times, that you will want to have it slightly to the right or slightly to the left to compensate for light and dark areas in an image. I think on Nikon cameras, this looks more like a digital gas gauge in your car - with more or less bars lighting up, instead of just a moving ticker like on the Canons. I mentioned in the prior post that your camera has an internal light meter. It is reading all the lights and darks of the image you are about to snap. Now is when YOUR brain gets to make choices in proper exposure. With your camera in manual, YOU can decide if you want to slightly underexpose or slightly overexpose (technically called exposure compensation) your image. Take for instance the picture above where I took a picture of my camera. My light meter was "reading" everything it was seeing and telling me where I fell on that exposure line. My brain has to know that my camera is seeing a lot of black in the image, therefore it will try to tell me that I need to brighten up some. (That little ticker exposure thing that I see is going to be far over to the left telling me that I am about underexposure my picture). When in reality I know that it is just seeing a lot of dark areas, and my brain needs to overrule the cameras brain. Make sense? Let's try again using whites. You know how when you take pictures out in the snow - the snow in your image usually turns out really gray instead of white? (So, okay, I guess you Floridians don't know about that, but it's a common thing in most other places). The reason is because your internal light meter is reading all that white and is trying to compensate for that. Your camera is always trying to balance out the lights and the darks and find a "neutral gray". So, when I am shooting in snow, I know that my exposure reading is going to be far over to the right and I am going to use MY brain to compensate for that. Clear as mud? That's what I thought. It's like trying to explain how the insides of a computer work - well, because, thats kind of exactly what it is. A little mini computer. So - to sum it up - you want your little ticker-thingy-exposure-meter-thingy (what IS that called anyway?) to always be near the middle.

Taking that a step further - the best way that I know if I am getting proper exposure is by reading the internal HISTOGRAM on my camera. If you are ready to take your skills to the next level it is very important that you are able to read your histogram. This is a graph that measures all the light and dark information in an image that you just took. For the most part - you want your histogram to look like a little hill (or hills) right in the middle of the graph.



If the "hill" is smooshed over to the left side of the graph, then you have underexposed the
image. (Oh look - I even underexposed the image of my underexposed image - HA!)




If the hill is smooshed over to the right side, then you have overexposed the image.

(pardon the history book under the camera) :)

Sometimes, just previewing your image on your camera can make you think you have proper exposure, until you check the histogram, then you can see if you are overexposing or underexposing. There will be times that your histogram will have lots of little hills in it - this is okay, it's just taking in all the information of the lights and darks (and even colors), but the main rule of thumb is to not let anything be smacked up against either the right or left wall of the histogram. So, check your manual and find out how to pull up the histogram for each image.

Let's chat a little bit about FOCUS. I mentioned in my previous post that most photographers leave their lenses on automatic focus. This part is when you can most definitely let that computer inside your camera work for you. I think the exception to this is if you are into macro phography (kind of like using a magnifying glass or microscope type of photography), then you might want to use your lens in manual focus. Most photographers I know always let the lens do this part. The part you WANT to do yourself is to choose your focal point. Again - dig through your manual to find out how to easily change your focal points. Let's pretend I have a little newborn baby laying in front of me and his precious little piggy toes are just so sweet that I want to snap a picture of just his toes... like this!!


So, I choose a low aperture so that the rest of the image will be kind of blurry so that we can focus just on his toes. This is when I want to select a focal point that lies just on his toes. If I had chosen a focal point that was further over to the right - then we might have focused on his face and then his toes would have been out of focus. If you want the whole baby in focus, this is when you would put your aperture at a much higher number, like 6, 8 or above (again, depth of field comes into play here). In this picture my aperture was at 2.8. The cameras that I use have only nine focal points - but I know there are lots of other cameras out there with LOTS of focal points (ahem... ERIN!!). So, I choose one of my nine focal points.


You can see them here on the screen on top of my camera - but all of this information I can also see as I am looking through my lens. I change my focal points on the fly with every image that I take while never even taking my eye off my camera. This is a goal that you want to be able to get to. You should know your camera inside and out so that you can change these focal points without even having to stop and think about it. If the spot on your image falls at a place where you don't have a focal point, you simply place one of your focal points on the spot where you want it, push your shutter button half-way down to lock in the focus, and then while holding the button down, reposition your camera to the way you want the picture taken, and then finish pushing down the shutter button. This can be kind of tricky and I rarely use that method - but it works when you have to use that option.

Here is a good way to make sure you are nailing your focus - after you select your focal point, lets say on the eyes, like in this picture....


I make double and sometimes triple sure that I have locked in the focus right on the eyes by pressing my shutter button half way down several times. By pressing it half way down, it will focus and make a little beeping sound (if you have your camera set to do so). This is how I know I have focus, I then lift my finger and do it again, and sometimes even a third time (a little bit of my OCD showing itself here) - I have found that by doing this is can get a super sharp focus exactly where I want it!! Just a little tip...

Well, that is enough info to digest for today. Next up - all about LIGHT!! How to read it, how to use it, and how to get that sparkle in the eyes!!