Hi Everyone

With the festive season preparations in full swing, I thought I would look back on some of my Christmas photography commissions as a professional photographer in Edinburgh, East Lothian and throughout Scotland, particularly whilst working as a newspaper photographer in East Lothian and Midlothian.  Its largely a great time to photography people, due to the joy, costumes and general light shows you get at this time of year, but I thought I would look at some of the challenges for the Christmas photographer.  Here we go:

1. Photographing Christmas Light turn on celebrations can be challenging due to the weather and the crowds, make sure you are in the perfect spot when the lights are turned on - be assertive, otherwise you will get lost amongst the crowds and get poor photos.

2. Most outdoor Christmas photoshoots are in almost total darkness.  The lights themselves won't help overcome this, as exposing to the lights will only show the lights in the photos and not the people.  Use flash to get photos of people in the foreground, then take a tripod long exposure shot of the lights, preferably when there is still some detail in the sky, ie not at the darkest time of day.

3. At any Christmas event, photograph children, with the permission of their parents of course.  They look great in their costumes and their genuine enthusiasm for Christmas enhances any photo.

4. Try to capture facial expressions, always important, but even more so at this time of year.

5. If outdoors, prepare well for the weather.  You will probably be hanging about waiting on something to begin, so get well wrapped up.

Anyway, hope that helps you to create some magical event photography images.

Col

www.colinwrightphotography.co.uk

www.edinburghotographer.com