Photography Tip: Photographing Fairy/Christmas Lights This Holiday Season || The Authentic Portrait

You know those photos - the couple wrapped in fairy lights, the baby surrounded by them - they're stinking adorable. It's the classic Pinterest holiday shot and everyone wants it.

It's also one of those shots that's hard to get and easy to make a photo that appears on one of those Buzzfeed "15 worst Pinterest fails" type of lists.

Yes, it's hard. But the good things in life usually are worth it!

So, my tips:

1. Use window light mixed with fairy lights and NO flash

Put your subject in an area where you get a lot of window light coming across them. This will help illuminate your subject and still allow the glow of the fairy lights to show!

2. Have a lot of fairy lights (3-4 strands is optimum)

The more lights, the merrier! Be sure that these light DO NOT OVERHEAT! This is serious, if they get too hot they could easily burn someone. Safety is your number one priority (ESPECIALLY when working with kids and babies!!!).

3. Give your subjects something to have them stay still!

Because there is a low amount of light, it's easy to get a lot of motion in your photographs, if you're on manual, be sure that you are at a lower shutter speed like 1/125th or 1/60th to both freeze motion and allow lots of light in. For your aperture I'd recommend using the lowest aperture you can meaning f2.8 or f3.5.

Some cute ideas to help kiddos stay still:

- Give them a candy cane to play with

- Sing a song together

- Give them silly words to say. Usually this gets a laugh too!

Good luck and most of all, have fun!

This is just one of the solid, easy to implement tips and tricks for photography that I talk about in The Authentic Portrait: A Parent’s guide to Documenting Childhood, an ebook perfect for anyone who want to learn the basics of photography and improve their photos without spending hours and hours taking classes. Find out more here!

Try out these tips and take some pictures of your own!! Share them with me over on Instagram in #TheAuthenticPortrait series, a series for learning and growing in photography. Don’t forget to tag your photos with #TheAuthenticPortrait!