Marc Byram Photography - Photo Tips Blog: Capturing Christmas in a better light. ...

There used to be a time when someone would get a new film camera for Christmas and spend the rest of the festive holidays boring people literally ridged by holding smiles and simply momentarily blinding them with the flash, and then weeks later getting their results back, usual with the best picture having at least one persons head missing. Well with digital photography things have moved on, but not necessarily for the better, with a trend for quantity rather than quality.

So with a bit of Christmas cheer what I hope to do here is give you a few tips to encourage you to take better images and thereby have something of quality to look back on in years to come.

The first thing I suggest is to pay attention to background of your image, by having nothing too distracting behind the subject. Natural lighting is far better than camera flash, so use window light when inside were possible, or least switch a few lights on pictures in the dark are never good ones, unless you are in a photographic studio with the right lighting. Also make sure that the subjects eyes are the focal point on the image.

Christmas day itself is a wonderful opportunity to get pictures of children unwrapping all those presents. For these shots just capture it as it happens don’t get them to pose for the camera, let them loose and snap away. You could with a little forward planning get a large white or light coloured sheet and put down first and pile the presents onto this so that the only image you get is children and presents without any other distractions. Also if you can do this near a large window or in a conservatory with natural light your pictures will be so much better for it. Also get yourself to the same level as your subject, if they are on the floor get on the floor with them not only will there images be better but you will also be less noticed !

Now this year we have already experienced snow and yes this is a wonderful opportunity to get some great pictures. There is one very important thing to know about cameras and snow ….. snow is WHITE not grey but because it is highly reflective your camera metering will automatically underexpose it and that is why it is grey in your pictures. Most of the time camera light metering is good but a lot of white or black will confuse it and it will compensate incorrectly. Digital cameras are no different than film, but have a few advantages because you can play with the settings to try getting the snow looking as it should. If you still have film you need to increase your exposure to slightly overexpose in such situations usually about one stop and with digital the same principle applies expect you can also see the results.