How to take great Christmas photos – my easy hacks for festive mobile phone photos 

It’s the season of eating to many cookies and family coming together.

I always love helping with the first, but I am pretty sure you wouldn’t want me to.

So let’s talk about family getting together. Not the bit about your auntie falling asleep with a glass of bailey’s is her hand after eating too much of the delicious Christmas dinner!

I thought you might like some tips about how to take great Christmas photos of your family this holiday season.

Can you take our family photo?

Sure,

But neither on Yule nor on Christmas day or Boxing day. On those days, you are on your own!

I am not cruel though. Here is some help of how to get the perfect winter family photos…

How to get great indoor Christmas family photos

Let’s be frank. We are in the UK, the chances that it is lashing it down at Christmas time are higher than not. So let’s start with this.

It is all about the light!

You will notice your phone will want to do something silly like a two second exposure. And then the photo is still grainy.

That is because it is too dark for the camera to see well. So switch on all the lights that are between the camera and the people. (I assume you use a timer and get yourself in the photo. If you do, a tin of beans and a rubber band do a great job at holding the phone still.) Switch of any bright lights behind them. Now your phone can see you all much better.

If you are photographing your loved ones in front of a lit up Christmas tree, well, I have written a detailed instruction about how to photograph your dog in front of the tree, and it works for people. too. You can find it here.

Help, the photo is yellow!

To the naked eye all the lights in our house seem to be colourless, but they actually aren’t. Most lightbulbs are a bit yellow. Our brain is just great at filtering this unwanted hue out.

The good news is, most phones now have some basic editing software, that allows you to correct the colour temperature of any photo you have taken.
You just need to move the Warmth slider in the editing settings until the photo looks right.

How to get great outdoor Christmas Photos

If you are lucky, the rain will stop long enough to herd everyone into the garden and take the photo there.

But hey, all the plants look dead. What you gonna do?!

If you have evergreens, use them as background! Otherwise, the back or front of the house might look better than a leafless bush.

If you don’t want the house in the background, and there are no evergreens, well, it’s gonna be the dead looking bush then.

But all is not lost!

If you have a reasonably new phone,  there is something called portrait mode on it. And this is your secret weapon.

The portrait mode blurs everything behind and in front of your focus point. The focus point should of course be the faces of your family. And if you get it right: tadah! That naked flowerbed is now just a splodge of dull colour.

But there are a few things to arrange carefully when using the portrait setting:
1. It blurs everything that is not aligned with your focal point. This means everyone has to stand in one line and the same distance from the camera. Otherwise, some people will be blurry.
2. The more distance you put between the people and the dead looking flora, the less prominent and depressing will it look in the photo.

If you have a camera that allows you to adjust the aperture setting, widening the aperture (make the number smaller). It does the same thing and gives you more control than your phone’s portrait mode.

How to take great Christmas family photo in the snow

You got snow?! You lucky bastards!

Aright then, go outside and let’s take a perfect winter white Christmas photo before it starts melting.

This should be easy. The background is white and plain, just stand the people in it and snap away, right?

And then you look at the photo and the snow looks grey. What!?!

This is normal.

Let me geek out for a sec please on why this happens.
The snow reflects a lot of light. In fact there is now too much light for the camera (any camera, not just mobile phones). This means the shutter speed (the time the camera lets light in to take the photo) goes really quick to avoid over exposing the photo. Unfortunately, this means the snow is not bright white anymore.

Again, most modern phones have editing software built in that is more than capable to correct this. Just adjust the brightness, exposure and brilliance settings up until you have the people well lit and the snow and sky the right colour.

Just one more thing…

Now that you know how to take great Christmas photos without needing to pull me away from my own lazy hibernation days, there is only one thing left to do: to wish you an awesome holiday season! 

Blessed Yule! Happy Hanukah! Merry Christmas! Happy holidays!
…and a very happy new year!
(See you in the new one x)

Bright blessings,

Eco-friendly Wedding Photography from the Handfasting And Pagan Wedding Photographer UK and EU