It’s the holiday season again and for some of us, it’s a time to take that camera out of the cabinet and dust it off for another round of shooting memorable pictures, or so we think.  Holiday photography woes sometimes follow closely behind and a memorable experience may not be captured as you had wanted to in pictures.  Here are some ideas you could try out this season to bring back the smiles into your holiday albums.

Check your Camera and Accessories

Regardless of whether you are using a consumer digicam or a prosumer DSLR camera, it’s important to make sure you have everything you need on hand. You will be taking lots of pictures during the holidays, so make sure your memory cards are up to par and if you are using rechargeable batteries, keep them charged and have an extra set ready.

Some additional accessories that could prove themselves handy are like:

Camera Tripod

for group pictures, or when you need to shoot without the harsh lighting from your camera’s flash.

Memory Card Reader
if you are holidaying away from home, a notebook to use with this is pretty useful

A Printer
a dedicated photo printer is handy when you want to surprise your friends by printing pictures for them on the spot. Otherwise, a desktop printer connected to a computer will work just ask well.

Keep all your accessories together or in a versatile camera bag, so you don’t have to go scurrying in search of these and miss a once in a lifetime holiday shot.

Control your Flash

Holiday celebrations are always held with friends and families, and these are commonly indoors. In most of these cases, lighting would not be bright and perfect for photography. Nonetheless, these lighting represents the warm atmosphere and celebrative mood of the occasion.

Flash lighting is harsh when used against soft indoor lighting. Use your flash sparingly whenever possible to capture the right mood. There are a couple of things you can do here:

1. If your camera has slow shutter with flash sync feature, use this to light up your subject and capture adequate background lighting.

2. Set your camera on a higher ISO setting and the largest aperture size to shoot in low light conditions. Although this may result in a noisier picture, but the grain may give the picture an interesting character.

In a long room like this, small on-board flash is less than adequate to light up the entire area. Although this picture was taken with a flash bounced off the ceiling of the room, the bright neutral lighting from the flash has removed the warm ambience given off by the candles and warm tungsten lighting. Also take note of the harsh shadows created by the flash.

The same scene was taken with a diffused flash setting along with slow shutter speed to get the right exposure from the existing lighting. In this case, the flash did not kill the ambience but helped to highlight the foreground items. The exposure reading was taken from the existing ambience lighting to help determine the suitable shutter setting. A final touch was a soft filter effect to soften the whole composition.

 

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Shoot Candids

We are all so used to the common posed pictures with the “cheesy” smiles. Break away from the norm and fill your albums with candid shots. Candid shots depict expressions, mood and the atmosphere of the holiday. Keep your camera on when you expect something surprising will happen and capture it. Composition may take a backseat here but there isn’t anything wrong unless you completely crop off someone’s head in the process. In this sense, variety is good to liven up a holiday album.

Get behind the scene. Shoot pictures of the family preparing food in the kitchen, putting up decorations. Remember that a truly memorable experience of a celebration is also the time spent in preparing for it.

Getting a shot of someone in the middle of a surprise is like finding a “gem” of an image. Make sure you always have your camera ready for action!

 

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Shoot A Sequence of Pictures

A video camera is becoming a norm in our celebrations. But, don’t fret if you don’t have one handy. Use your still camera like a video camera and capture a sequence of pictures in addition to single shots. This technique can capture a sequence of actions or expression just like a video (without the sound, of course). Stitch these together using post-editing software and print it out like a film strip. It’s a good idea to do this when you consider that your pictures will probably be viewed more than the video you have shot.

 

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Get up Close
 

Get into the habit of looking at the little things that make up a celebration. These are good to have in between your people shots as it describes the look and feel of the occasion. Some example of things you can look out for are like signages, gifts, names, guestbook, decorations, the food spread, game items, as well as dresses and costumes of your guests.
 

Get up close to the little things that make the event memorable such as table decorations and little gifts for friends.

 

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Compose your Picture

 

Shooting candids may seem like shooting nonchalantly. But, with practice you learn to compose quickly. Composition here means being aware of what you have included or excluded from a picture. It also means taking a consideration to the orientation of your picture, either vertical or horizontal and what is the background you have placed your subjects in. In future articles, we’ll look at how these affect the picture.

 

Compose your picture by going near to the action. Crop out unnecessary background clutter.

 

Try some creative compositions!

 

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Share the Pictures

 

The usage of digital pictures is much more versatile compared to film.  Ironically for most people, holiday pictures end up in a little corner of a computer’s hard drive or are sent to the lab for a single set of prints.  Here are a few of the many things you can do:

-         Email the pictures to friends and families so they have digital copies of them too

-         Post edit the pictures with graphics and frames before printing it out for the album

-         Print the pictures out and frame them as gifts or giveaway picture CDs

-         Create a blog site if you don’t already have one and describe your holiday with pictures

-         Post them up at online gallery and share the pictures