Yesterday, I did a little mini session with my boys by our own Christmas tree. It was 7:30 at night, everyone was tired…but they had on matching pajamas. I knew that they weren’t in the mood to “smile for the camera” but I wanted to do something fun with them. Last year, I took some great photos of Finn *my oldest* by the tree, so I wanted to recreate it this year with both boys.
And here’s what we got! I love the way that it turned out, especially after I edited it!
A few people have asked me to tell them on I did it, so I thought I’d write out a little tutorial for people who are looking to take this type of silhouette photograph of their own children!
So here’s my handy-dandy guide for “How to take a great picture of your children by the Christmas tree”
1. First, you NEED an SLR camera (single lens reflex)–this means that you need to be able to set the shutter speed, aperture and ISO for your image.
2. This will work best at night–you need to turn off ALL the lights in your house (including the television if it’s in that room).
3. Set up your camera on a tripod (or a sturdy surface) so that your image is in focus, and not shaky looking.
4. Set your ISO to somewhere between 100 and 200. Since it’s so dark, you don’t want a lot of grain in your image, so you want to go with a LOW shutter speed.
5. Set your shutter speed to around 1/15 of a second. This will make your lights have that pretty glowing look.
6. Set your aperture as OPEN as it will go. Optimally you want it to be at around a 1.4 or 1.8.
7. TAKE SOME PHOTOS and see what you get.
Here’s another example of what I got!
Sweet Finn kissing his baby brother on the head. This image was shot at 1.8 aperture, 1/15 shutter speed, ISO 160. The only light in the room was the tree itself.
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