It's always nice to nail that exposure for a beautiful portrait using a balance of different lights. Check out this short video by The Slanted Lens about the basics of shooting photos with Christmas lights. With the combination of proper exposure, time of day, a dramatic sky and some other pretty simple techniques, you can take some great holiday photos this season.As J.P. Morgan discusses in this video, there are just a few things you'll need to understand to achieve perfect exposure for your images. A lot of these principles are a great rule of thumb to apply to dusk/twilight photography. So whether it's your neighbor's overly gaudy Christmas decoration, the epic tree decoration or a creative spin for holiday portraits this video should be helpful in achieving that perfect shot.
If it's nice soft bokeh you're trying to achieve, The Slanted Lens has a video for that too (below). Combining speedlites or strobes with a fast aperture will give you the dreamy Christmas light backdrop you're looking for this season. Both these short videos are heavily geared towards the beginning photographer, but there are definitely some areas of lesson to both. Hope this information provides helpful to you as you exercise some photo creativity this holiday season.
[via TheSlantedLens]
Lead image by Limor Garfinkle
I've always enjoy watching this guy's videos, regardless of the content . He can be talking about eating lizards and I wouldn't care, he'd make it nice to watch.