Now that Thanksgiving is over, we dedicated Saturday to decorating our home for Christmas. After hauling boxes of decoration up from the basement, we went to work. Of course, we started with the Christmas tree, since that is what my kids were most excited for. Then we put of the Creche, ran some lit garland, unpacked the nutcrackers and hung the stockings on the stair’s railing (we don’t have a chimney).
Once night fell, I convinced my kids that after a hearty ice cream dessert, I would need their help to take a photo by the tree. Since ice cream was involved, they anxiously agreed. But I will admit, once the dessert was over, they were ready to back out of the deal.
I turned on the white lights of the Christmas tree, closed the shutters, and turned off all the other lights in the area. I set my camera on the tripod, put it in manual mode and took a few test shots. After snapping 75+ photos in RAW+JPG, using a variety of shutter speeds (I kept my aperture at f/3.5), I let my kids spend a few minutes playing before sending them off to bed.
I opened the RAW image of the one that had no motion blur from my moving kids, and that had the best facial position and posture. I adjusted the white balance to AUTO and increased the exposure before opening up the image in Photoshop. I wasn’t completely sold on the look, so I played with another setting – Saturation. I added my final element – the word believe – the photo before it met my desired look.
Enough talk. Here’s the final photo, along with the camera settings:
Canon 60D | 18-135mm lens | 1/8 | f/3.5 | ISO 400
I will admit that I got the photo idea from Pinterest, and I really like how my own interpretation of the photo ended up. Wishing everyone a Happy Holidays.
~ Carltonaut
Carltonaut 