Tis the Season.....

Pssst.  I have a confession to make....I am addicted to BOKEH.  I love the lights from the Christmas tree.  Apparently I have had this love affair for almost my entire life.  According to my parents, during my second Christmas season, they were out visiting friends or family and apparently I was fascinated with the lights on the Christmas tree.  My parents at the time did not have a Christmas tree but seeing how much I enjoyed it they bought a Christmas tree that year.

My Christmas tree traditionally goes up around December 1st.  I love the glow and warmth from the lights.  Every year I try to get a picture of the Christmas tree but in previous years it never seemed to look in the pictures as it did in real life.  I had always struggled with getting that perfect picture, but until this year I really had no clue what I was doing.

As soon as our Christmas tree was up I started to play around to get that Bokeh look of the lights.

50mm lens.  f 1.4, 1/25 ISO 100

 

Even an extra string of lights became my focus.

 



L: 50mm f 1.8, 1/100, ISO 400
R: 50mm f 1.4, 1/10, ISO 200

 

Once I had figured out how to get that bokeh Christmas lights my next challenge was to get the bokeh of the lights with an in focused subject.  I struggled with that initially but then I went back to the basics, my subject would need to be further away from my tree (background).

 

L: 50mm f 1.8, 1/15, ISO 800
R: 50mm f 2.5, 1/50, ISO 800

 

The picture on the left was taken one evening when I was attempting to get the bokeh of the lights with Rachael in focus.  Even though I did not achieve that in this picture, I still love this picture.  In the second picture I had figured it out.  By placing Rachael further away from the Christmas tree I was able to get the bokeh of the lights with her in focus.

 

Dennis was a willing model one night which enabled me to get these shots.  Not that he would ever admit it but I think he actually had some fun helping me out.

 

50mm lens f 1.4, 1/25 and ISO 100

 



 

 Props

 

Props can definitely be useful in photography.  While I was in Canadian Tire shopping for more shiny gold balls for the Christmas tree, I came across these huge, red Christmas balls.  I immediately thought they would make great props.  I decided to only use the plain shiny gold balls for the tree but the sparkly gold balls were a lot of fun to play around with.

 

L: 50mm f 1.4, 1/40, ISO 3200
R: 50mm 1.4, 1/30, ISO 800    



 

So after I had figured out how to get the bokeh on the lights my next challenge was to get the sparkly Christmas lights.  So I set up my tripod and started to play. 

 

L: 35mm f 18, 2.5s, ISO 400
Center: 35mm f 18, 6s, ISO 400
R: 35mm f 18, 3s, ISO 400  
 

A recent blog post from Beryl Young discussed three ways to photograph holiday lights.  As usual this blog post was informative and the steps were so easy to follow.  I decided that my next challenge would be to attempt shape lights.  In her blog post, Beryl provided the link to another blog post that described how to make a special cover for your lens. So off to Michaels I went one day after work to pick up the necessary materials and then it was time to have some fun.

 

 

 

 

 

50mm lens f 1.8, 1/125, ISO 1600

50mm lens f 1.8, 1/125, ISO 1600

 

 Wishing you and yours a very Merry Christmas and All the best in 2014.