How to Photograph Outdoor Christmas Lights
Making the Most of Seasonal Picture Opportunities
Jan 2, 2009
At this time of year many towns and villages around the world are lit up at night by festive arrays of lights to mark the Christmas and New Year season. These displays are obvious targets for photographers, and with a little care it is possible to get some striking compositions that show familiar places in unfamiliar ways.
Photographing Night-Time Reflections
There is something especially appealing about the way lights reflect on water, so a river, an estuary or a pool can make an ideal foreground. The reflections from even a simple line of colored lights can create some attractive, intricate patterns, especially if the water is moving.
Various approaches can give different but equally good results, and the best approach for any particular photographer will depend on the equipment available. Ideally a digital camera capable of long exposures and with adjustable ISO values, together with a rock steady tripod and a cable release will give most flexibility.
Composing by the Rule of Thirds
As always, keep in mind the “rule of thirds” to line up the shots. For each composition, it is worth making several exposures at different settings for the best chance of coming away with a satisfying photograph.
The first four examples are from the town of West Looe in Cornwall, southwest England, looking upriver with an arch of the bridge at the right of the frame. Nearby two sailing boats have Christmas season lights running up their masts and rigging.
When photographing moving water, different lengths of exposure can give quite different creative effects. For each of the shots shown the ISO was set fairly low at 100 to reduce the risk of noise in the darkest areas. This meant the exposures had to be fairly long, but how long, and how much blurring, is good and how much is too much?
Working with RAW Files
At 10 seconds the first picture is the brightest and the reflections in the water are the most blurred. At 3.2 seconds in the third and fourth pictures the reflections are well defined but the original pictures were underexposed.
With the RAW files and using Adobe Lightroom it was possible to improve things by tweaking a few settings: increasing the exposure value by almost one stop improved the brightness of the underexposed shots. The “recovery” slider sharpened and brought some detail back in the brightest areas. The “fill” slider lightened slightly the dark walls of some of the buildings.
Which of these shots is best is mainly a matter of personal preference. And the effects of different settings will vary from time to time and from place to place. The fifth shot is of the nearby village of Polperro where the harbor was more calm and there were fewer lights, so a ten second exposure worked better than in Looe.
So it is worth experimenting. But in any case, festive decorations and reflections photographed at night can greatly enhance what would otherwise be a familiar and rather dull picture.
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