Turning on the Christmas Lights
Way before Martin Luther first used candles on a Christmas tree to depict the stars lighting up the heavens, light played an important role in our Christmas celebrations. The Romans placed oil lamps in living trees to celebrate their festival of Saturnalia, and the Vikings burnt Yuletide logs to safeguard the sun. Today, most homes and towns light up for the festive season. Whether it’s your family decorations, the traditional lights around the harbour in the little Cornish fishing village of Mousehole or the grand Regent Street illuminations in our capital city, there are opportunities wherever you live to capture the glitter and sparkle of Christmas.
The best time to stop shopping and start shooting your Christmas lights is at dusk, when the darkening sky still has enough light to record as a deep blue.
This, and the warm glow spilling out from shop windows, will ensure that strings of bulbs decorating trees or hanging in garlands across the street have a richly coloured backdrop rather than end up as pinpricks of light against the black of night.
Use a tripod, setting exposures long enough to capture the full cycle of any flashing illuminations. And don’t worry if its been raining – rain is a great opportunity as wet pavements create interesting reflections that help fill the frame, as do the trails of car lights passing through the shot. If the weather’s too bad to get out, follow Martin Luther’s lead at home by setting up still-life shots of your own decorated Christmas tree, focusing in tight on fairy bulbs reflected in glass baubles or spiky spruce branches draped in tinsel and silhouetted against the bright glow of flickering church candles.
It’s all about experimenting with light and focus, so play around and have fun. It’s what Christmas is about!
Expert Advice by Pete Martin
Exposure: it’s a good idea to experiment with aperture and shutter, viewing the results until you get the right exposure. An average meter reading is a good place to start. Aim for some detail in the shadows but make sure the lights don’t burn out and lose their colour.
Lens: a long lens bunches up the perspective to make groups of illuminations appear closer together, while tightening the focal plane so that lights either side defocus into soft glowing spheres. The wider the aperture, the softer the focus.
Post-shoot: experiment with a stocking over the lens to simulate soft focus filters, or simply turn to the host of filter effects available on your image program for ethereal effects. Use Photoshop’s Lens Flare (Filters, Render) to add extra impact to light sources within the frame, or buy a set of star filters for your digital camera.
