1. Have fun! As your family's CMO (Chief Memory Officer), take the opportunity to document the holidays from your unique perspective. Also, make sure you get out from behind the lens and into some pictures yourself!
2. Candids! Candids! When amongst family and friends, pretend you are a paparazzo (with manners) and go for those journalistic shots where the subjects are not posing for you. People talking, laughing, being together. The natural results will be very pleasing. And hey, you only live once, don't be afraid to set your camera to black and white for your journalistic shots!
3. Take a picture of your decorated living room every year. It will make for great memories in later years!
(This living room shot was taken with a 5-second exposure on a tripod)
4. Your camera's factory settings for file size and compression are almost always the best for general shooting. Don't be tempted to turn down the quality to get more pictures on your memory card.
5. Take closeup pictures of the Christmas decorations in your house. They make really cool scrapbook page elements!
(click image to see larger)
6. Don't always crop close to your subjects. Looking at photos from the past, we like to see the styles of the day. Christmas is the one time of year when almost everybody takes out their camera, so take advantage of capturing your customs and fashions from year to year. Your grandkids will appreciate it!
7. Use your flash on a sunny day in the snow! It may sound crazy, but the brighter the conditions, the more shadows can appear on peoples' faces. Using your flash can help to fill in the shadowy areas.
8. For a beautiful picture of your Christmas tree, try turning off the flash and using a tripod. Or, you can set your flash to "night mode", or "slow" mode.
9. Photo Express is not open on Christmas day, so make sure you have enough memory and battery power on hand (hey, maybe you're getting a big new memory card for Christmas!). It is a good idea to charge up your batteries before you start your holiday traditions. If your camera uses AA batteries, you can use alkaline batteries in an emergency.
10. Focus, then recompose. Put your intended subject in the centre of your viewfinder, then press the shutter release button half-way to focus (this may seem obvious to a lot of us, but a lot of people aren't aware that pressing the button half-way allows an autofocus camera to search for a focus point). While keeping the button half-pressed, you can now move your subject to a more interesting area of the picture.
11. Try several different angles or zoom positions to get that perfect shot. Standard photos of smiling people holding presents make great memories, but try to go outside the norm as well. Candid shots, photos of children taken from down at their level, closeup shots of Christmas baking, Christmas cards, etc, make wonderful additions to scrapbooks and albums.
12. Don't let bright Christmas lights fool you. You generally need to use your flash when taking people shots indoors. Make sure you are within acceptable range to avoid underexposure.
Hope these tips help you get the best holiday photos ever!
Trust us with your Memories,
Ron C