7 Tips for Creative Christmas Photography
Over the holidays, everyone loves to take lots of photographs of friends and family amidst the Christmas decorations and other seasonal trappings.
If you want the best results, perhaps it’s a good time to put down your phone and pick up your camera instead, where you’ll have much more control over the quality of your pictures, and allow your creativity to take over rather than an algorithm. If you want a dark image, make it dark, or light or blurred, you are in control.
Here are some tips for getting creative with your camera this Christmas so you can take lovely photos you’ll want to keep and treasure.
1) Get in close
Getting close to the subject almost always produces a much more engaging and dramatic portrait or photograph. Robert Capa, the famous war photographer, once said: ‘If your photograph isn’t good enough, you’re not close enough’ and he is probably right. Getting close to the subject brings more drama to the composition and more social interaction. Or you could choose to shoot from further away and crop in later. A quick search of famous photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson’s work highlights how often he photographed his subjects up close for dramatic effect.
2) Get outdoors
To capture snow or the drama of life outdoors, go outside for a walk in the fresh air for a whole new tableau of potential pictures. Then pick a subject, be-it people, cars, trees or architecture and make it a theme for a series of interesting pictures. Always take a camera with you, even when Christmas shopping, you never know when something or someone might pop out in front of you for that front page news story.
3) Switch off the flash
Low light photography preserves the background behind the subject and can produce a much more interesting final image, so drop the shutter speed, raise the ISO and open that aperture. Grain, even digital grain, can introduce much more atmosphere and move you away from taking the more common clinically accurate flashed digital images. One of my favourite photographers is Saul Leiter and his use of colour, composition and shutter speed in all conditions is inspiring to this day.
4) Use your ‘best’ lens
By this I mean your favourite lens, one that you are already familiar with. The trick to good photography is to eliminate the variables when taking the shot. So set the aperture, colour temperature, shutter speed and ISO in each location then shoot away. That way, if there is an error, it will be the same error in every image and all can be easily corrected after in post-production on apps like Lightroom or Capture One. Using one lens frequently will also enable you to compose an image even before bringing the camera to your eye, as you will know how wide the lens will reach and its characteristics for any aperture. This is particularly true of a prime lens. With its fixed focal length, it is small, light and entirely predictable, therefore ideal for a creative photographer.
5) Wait for the moment
Be ready to capture the expression and interaction when it happens. Remember, if someone does something interesting and you missed it, just wait, and chance are, they will do it again. A photographer to look out for is Matt Stuart who can be generally found walking up and down Oxford Street in London capturing images that are perfect examples of timing and composition.
6) Exposure
Set your exposure for each scene manually, and adjust accordingly. Initially there will be mistakes but it’s a great lesson to be able to adjust brightness or depth of field quickly and accurately. Do this often enough and pretty soon you can make these manual changes without thinking about them and can rely instead on muscle memory. This puts the photographer entirely in control of the creative process, such that you can witness a scene, decide upon an interpretation and achieve it within moments. It’s far more satisfying than letting your camera decide.
7) Consider black and white
Subjects can often over-dominate an image purely because of colour, especially if they are red which is a colour that jumps out at you (danger signs etc). If you choose black and white settings this can shift the subject focus to another part of the frame. Black and white is more about light and dark, shapes and contrast and you’ll benefit because each image has to be given some thought and consideration, which you’ll notice afterwards in the quality of your results.
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Professional corporate photographer, providing company headshot photography and video for businesses in London, the rest of the UK and Europe. Piranha are commissioned by FTSE100 companies and start-ups alike, for numerous projects, covering a wide range of work and styles. Portraits and office photography for use on websites, events coverage and PR shots for press and publications, as well as Board and location photography for annual reports. Using top of the range Leica cameras and lenses. We process the images promptly and to an extremely high standard.