It makes for a great time to get out and capture all the Christmas lights while they are still around. 🙂

Christmas lights and lights in general can be hard to capture especially if you want to also capture a person or some other subject that is not lit up by the lights.  The resulting images will be that the either the subject will be dark or the lights will be over exposed.

The trick is to use some form of flash to light up the subject so that you can even out the exposure across the entire image and in doing so reduce the contrast between dark and light.  There are lots of ways to do this and some I will go into in the coming weeks.

If you are just out to capture the lights you may not need a tripod but it is a good idea if you are after sharp images due the the camera needing to open the shutter longer than you can hold the camera steady for.

What I tend to do is go out and give it a try.  I start with hand holding and then move toward using other supporting devices if the need arises.

Why?  because then I can travel lite and I have less equipment to get in peoples way.  After all they are also there to experience the joy that is Christmas lights.

So before the lights fade away for another year, grab your camera and head out to capture some lights.  Experiment a little, play with your shutter and aperture and just have a bit of fun.