Christmas Lights

Today, I decided to grab some shots of Christmas decorations. I want to find a few homes where I could shoot from a few minutes before sunset to a few minutes after. That means moving pretty fast because the light is changing quickly (don’t be afraid to shoot ‘after dark’). I wanted to find homes where the sun was setting behind them, so that there would a little twilight in the sky behind the house’s lights.

I pick an area know for all it’s decorated homes. I ran into a few challenges. First, many of the best decorated homes did not turn their lights on until it was completely dark. Second, there where a lot of cars parked at the curb — many of them belonging to other ‘visitors’ who were just driving around, looking at the lights. In addition to creating some composition challenges, because of how they where parked, many kept their headlights on, messing up my exposure! Finally, timing the shot, as cars drove past, was an issue, because I was using the self-timer.

Initially, I thought I would shoot wide open (f2.8). Since I was using a 35mm lens, I wasn’t too worried about depth-of-field, or exact focus. However, I wanted to see how the D700 would handle the fading light and the little decorative lights, so I went to ISO 3,200 and aperture priority, settling on f11 and letting the camera select the shutter speed. The camera was on a tripod and I used the self-timer to reduce vibration from the mirror. Originally, I thought I would use tungsten white balance (since the lights are tungsten), but it was way too cool for my tastes, so I tweaked the WB, in Lightroom, and ended up at about 4900-5000K.

So, here is what I ended up with.

ISO 3,200, f11, 1.6 seconds

The next home was much brighter, so the shutter speed was a ‘fast’ 1/13.

ISO 3,200, f11, 1/13

I doubt either of these will be made into a Hallmark Card. I’d love to hear how some of you have done this – -and see some examples. Don’t be shy