Merry Christmas everyone 🌱

For the last few years all images posted here have been shot on my sim card-less phone but as a consequence of dusting off my old cameras ready to capture the effects of electroculture I once again have the ability to shoot more professional looking images with a shallow depth of field, richer colour range and better versatility in post production. In addition all my old cameras have time-lapse mechanisms built in, which is useful not only for capturing the movement of slow things in a creative way but also for capturing Christmas shots of my family.

(For anyone interested I am using the free magic lantern on my memory cards to activate numerous features including time-lapse which are not provided by manufacturers such as Canon & Nikon.)

How to shoot pics like these?

All I do is put my DSLR camera on a tripod, set up the shot and leave it shooting one picture every second. (A higher rate of shots per second is required if your family is not so co-operative).

I also pre-set the camera to give us a head start of 30 seconds before it begins shooting.

So once I've pressed the button we have 30 seconds to get ready. When the camera starts shooting, we all just smile and do the usual camera thing. "Cheeeeese" or "fromaaaaaage" as they say around here. We continue with this game for 30 seconds if we can and somewhere in there will be at least one good one.

The other thing to mention here is the lighting.

My main light source (key light) is coming from a dedo light and is essential in these situations. You could just use a regular desk light with 100w bulb if you don't have anything else. My dedo light (which amazingly still works after 25 years of use) has an orange tungsten bulb so I must also balance out the colours with a blue gel on the front to match the blue daylight from the window. The light is placed directly next to the camera, to minimise shadows.

For the back light (which is also important in shots like this) I put us in front of the window which naturally illuminates the top of our heads & hair.

For the post production I move the RAW files to my free photo app (the one which comes with all mac products) and I enhance the colours and contrast a little before creating a vignette (darken the corners) to draw the eye to the subjects in the middle.

And that's it!

I shot these for my mother but thought I would share them with you too.

Hope my little explanation here has been useful for any aspiring photographers.

Right... I must go. The children will be waking up in a moment, keen to see if Father Christmas brought them anything.

Love & Light everyone 🌱

And Merry Christmas 🎇