Photographing the Christmas Lights

Taking photos of the Christmas lights and decorations during this time of year. I am like so many love to take photos of the lights decorating the many homes this time of year as well as store decorations that stand out at night.

I have taken photos of the decorations while riding down the road at night just for fun. Sure they turn out blurred and you usually can’t really tell what they are of most of the time but from time to time I get one that shows up nicely doing that. I just set my camera for auto time exposure and set the aperture focus on infinity and snap away.

Then there are the times I want just to capture the scene as perfectly as I can. That calls for a tripod and remote shutter release so that the lights are captured in their sharpest possible way. I love the lights in the crisp night air sparkling and shining with so many different colors.

If you don’t have a tripod and only a point and shoot camera you can still capture some great shots of the lights. Use a fence or even your car to set you camera on to steady it enough to capture the lights. Set the camera on your car hood hold it as steady as you can while you snap the shot. Most of the new point and shoot cameras will set the exposure for you all you have to do is steady it against some object. Take several shots of each thing you want to capture as usually you will move the camera in one of more shots done this way but you can also get some great night shots of the lights as well.

This is short as there is no right or wrong way to capture the Christmas lights just go out and have fun doing it. Oh and post your results on Gather for others to see.

Here in Eagar, Az. each Christmas they have a parade at night where all the floats are lighted with Christmas lights. Each float will have hundreds to thousands of lights burning brightly as it rides down the main road here in town. I’ve included a few of those with this and as you see I had fun capturing them as they passed my location.