MomShots

I love getting questions for readers. It is better than comments. It is better than actually knowing people read me. It makes me so happy! But I got a question that has me kind of stumped.

Here is the question:

Hello! I have a question for you. I want to take pictures of my daughters holding a strand of Christmas lights and the lights be what illuminates them. Last night I tried it in a darkened room and if my flash was on, it was so bright that it looked like a light was on in the room and it didnt show that the lights were lit. If the flash is off, well you know, then you cant really take a picture of kids who wont be still for even half a second! So, do you have any tips on how to do this?? Thanks!–Amber

First off, thanks so much for sending me a question, Amber. It is such a good one!

So I tried an experiment. I set my son up on a chair in my living room one evening. The lights were on. He was holding Christmas lights and was really fascinated with them so keeping him in one place wasn’t too hard. He gave me nearly a full ten minutes (maybe a little less, but it was an eternity compared to his usual activity level) of sitting still so I got to take a few handfuls of shots. I tried with the ambient lights on, off, with flash and without flash.

I liked this one the best but still I’m not satisfied with my results enough to give advice on the issue.

What seemed to work for me was to keep the living room lights on. It gave enough ambient light that I was able to shoot him without the flash. I didn’t touch my white balance and so it has kind of a red tint to it, but I really like that as I think it gives a more warm snugly feeling to the shot.

I played around with my ISO, boosting it between 200 and 1600. The shot above was at an ISO of 200 and I didn’t like the resulting graininess. It was too much on my camera.

I only tried two shots with the flash and I really hated those results. While they were brighter, I just didn’t like the shadows behind the heads and I didn’t like that the lights weren’t as “glowy” as they had been on the faces.

To sum things up:

Which leads me to my last point; take tons of shots. I took 61 shots in the space of ten minutes. Out of those 61, I only had a very small handful of shots that I even dared showing you. I should have clicked that shutter button more!

So, my experiment was not very successful. Does anyone have any advice that they can offer Amber and I? It’s the perfect time of year to try these shots. It’s the perfect time of year to figure out this photographic problem! Let’s figure it out together.

I got a chance to go up to Salt Lake City yesterday, and play with a Lensbaby optic. If you are unfamiliar with what this is, as I was, it is a manual lens that you screw onto your camera and it creates a really fun blurring action and sun flares. It is definitely a toy, and not a must have lens, in my opinion. But it sure was fun! I have a few more photography items that are higher up on my must have list (like a new camera) but this was so much fun that I after I have checked that off my list, a Lensbaby will be surely added.

This was part of my local photowalking group, Photowalking Utah and courtesy of Lensbaby and Pictureline, a SLC based photo supply store. I had so much fun hanging out with other photogs and getting to know my friends Luann Hawker and Jennifer Grigg better. Both fun ladies and excellent photographers.

If you have not sought out your local photowalking group, I highly recommend it. It is such a wonderful resource for meeting friends and learning more about photography. If you don’t have a local photowalking group, you should totally start one. Today.

Here are a few of the images I took. I really enjoyed taking shots of inanimate objects. It’s funny they don’t run away or make silly faces at you like kids do. Of course, my love is capturing kids, but it was sure a fun break to photograph something different.