Spend some minutes to check out these Christmas photography tips and ideas even if you’re busy shopping for Christmas gifts, sending Christmas cards or decorating your houses and Christmas trees. Christmas Photography tips will help you to take better photos this holiday. While there are no silver bullet settings for your camera and each situation has a unique lighting condition, you can follow some common sense techniques to not waste your time taking bad Christmas photos and find what will work best for your desired result.

christmas photography

Be prepared on Christmas day
Be sure that your camera and gear is ready to take Christmas photos. Check if it’s fully charged, have enough space on memory card, don’t forget to pack tripod and flash.

Buy a fast memory card in advance
If you’d like to capture that fantastic moment, you need to use continuous shooting aka burst mode. The faster is your memory card (such as this 133X speed) the more photos you can take without camera stopping to save them.

Practice before Christmas
Take some practice shots a day or two before Christmas under the same lighting conditions. It will help you to set the best camera settings, white balance to take perfect photos.

Start early on Christmas day
If you want to take beautiful Christmas lights photos don’t wait until it’s too late. After it gets completely dark, you can’t have properly exposed both the lights and the surrounding sky. Find the spot when he ambient light and the Christmas lights are in balance.

Steady your camera for crisp Christmas photos
To avoid blurry photos, use tripod to steady your camera because most of Christmas shooting is done in low light condition. If you don’t have a tripod, use the timer setting to absorb the shake from pressing the capture button. If shooting with a phone, use both hands to brace the phone against something solid.

Use aperture wisely
If you want to capture bokeh or out of focus Christmas lights in the background, use fast lens for your DSLR and set maximum aperture (such as 1/8). If you’re shooting group of people and want everyone in focus choose a small aperture (like f/8 to f/11 or more).

Take impromptu Christmas photos
Unlike staged photos, impromptu Christmas photos are great to capture the live moment when something interesting happens unexpectedly. Have your camera handy to not miss the next great Christmas moment.

Set proper white balance
If you don’t want yellow color cast on your photos, set white balance manually or try to use Tungsten preset which usually works perfectly for Christmas lights. If you still some color cost on your photos, check how to remove color cast from photos.

Focus on eyes
If your take portrait or group photo, don’t forget that face should be your focus point and exposure metering point. You’ll be surprised how many Christmas photos go to the trash bin because people focus elsewhere.

Set background for Christmas portraits
You’ll want to take some portrait photos of your family and friends, so set the spot in your house when background is not too distractive such as curtain but have some Christmas elements for example Christmas balls or snowflakes decoration. Take photos at the beginning so people will look fresh.

Flash tradeoff
Using a flash will give you a crisp look, but the glow from the tree lights will be lost. Try to use a flash diffuser or if you have an external flash point it to the walls so you’ll get reflected light.

Get close to Christmas decorations
Use macro mode and lenses to capture the small things around Christmas party such as ornaments, decorations, sweets and food.

Fix some photos after Christmas
Don’t worry if you get a little blurry or noisy photo when shooting on your camera at high ISO or at low lighting, you can fix minor problems later in Photoshop with Topaz InFocus and Topaz DeNoise.