Tysons Corner Center
Every year, the Christmas decorations that pop up in the malls and office buildings in the area signal the holiday season. The strings of lights that wrap around the trees and line overhangs make for some pleasing light. They are usually a very warm yellow, and the many small points of light put together, make it a very soft light in photos. These are great for people photos, which is another reason everyone takes photos by the lit Christmas trees during this season.
The small points of light can also be used to make some unique photos while they are up. Bokeh a Japanese word that photographers use to describe the out-of-focus areas in the background of photos. Having the background completely blurred will help pop your subjects out of the frame. The amount of blur depends on how open an aperture you set on your lens. Additionally how far your subject is from the background affects the blur. If you have your subject a fair distance from the background, and you place your lens very close, you will have a nice out of focus background. If you have Christmas lights in that background, the shape of the lights will take on the shape of the aperture of your lens to make a nice shape with each bulb.
Christmas Tree Lights
An early Christmas gift from my in-laws was this Bokeh Masters Kit. The kit has hard plastic discs with shapes cut out in the middle of each. There is also another plastic mounting piece that you fit over the lens. When you fit this over your lens, then setup your subject as before, the pin point illumination from the Christmas lights takes on the shape of the disc.
Bokeh Masters Kit
This was the first setup I tried, and it works as advertised! Obviously, I tried the star disc for this image. The boxes were about 5 feet from the tree, and the lens was set to f/1.4. There was a large amount of vignetting from the lens which was expected since the holder was covering a portion of the lens edges along with the disc itself. But you can clearly see the stars from each of the lights.
I will have to try this with other subjects and setups, but this was a good start! With all of your decorations up inside your house and outside in your neighborhoods, there are lots of opportunities to try this out. Thanks to our friends at Encore Ballroom Couture for the gift and still-life subject!
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