Christmas lights, with all those incredible glowing decorations, just beg to be photographed, but usually they come out as colored pinpricks or a jagged blur of out-of-focus chunks of light. There are some easy things to fix all that.

The first thing you need is something to steady your camera on. A tripod is best, or gorilla pod. You can use a small beanbag or, in a pinch, set the camera on something solid. You will be working with longer exposures than you can hold without blurring.

For outdoor shots, the time of day is critical. Just around dusk or just before sunrise. By having some ambient light you can fill in the unlit areas of the trees and homes but still have the glowing light dominate.

Set your ISO speed to 400 or 800. If you go much higher you might start to get some grain or digital noise. You should test this; you will see the issue appear first in the shadow areas. Some of the newer cameras can go to higher ISOs, so do some testing.

Set your camera to manual for photographing Christmas. Set your aperture or f-stop to F8. This will give you a good depth of field for the focus. Going to f5.6 or f4 will give you more selective focus.

Start by setting your shutter speed at 1/30th of a second. As it gets darker you will have to slow it down to 1/15th, then 1/8th and so on. When you look at your LCD display you should see shapes in the shadows. A trick to help avoid camera shake when you press the shutter release is to use the camera’s self-timer.

If you are advanced enough to change the color balance you can set it on daylight to get the warm yellow glow or on tungsten to get the lights closer to their natural or real color. This setting will also increase the blue cast to the rest of the image but that’s okay, since it increases the tonal contrast of the image.

Use the Rule of Thirds to give your image powerful composition. Mentally divide your viewfinder into thirds vertically and horizontally. In the four points of intersection you should have something of interest in one or more of those points. A brighter or more interesting light or shape.

Indoors, you will still need the tripod but have a few of the room lights up, so there is some ambient light to fill in the areas the lights don’t illuminate.

So to recap:
1) Use a tripod.
2) Set your ISO to 400 or 800.
3) Set your camera to manual – start with F8 and shutter speeds of 1/30th of a second, slow that down as needed.
4) Set your colour setting to either daylight or tungsten depending on the effect you want.
5) Use Rule of Thirds for composition.

Happy Holiday shooting. If you follow these tricks you will get some great Christmas Lights photographs.

Did you spot us last weekend in our green jackets around Calgary? Our intrepid group of volunteer photographers were out in force this year at the The Sports Chek Mother’s Day Run/Walk.

This was our second opportunity to volunteer our services to the run/walk and we love every second of it. It’s hard to feel cold with so many smiling faces running up to you! The Sport Check Mother’s Day Run/Walk has an amazing group of volunteers that have been putting on this event for 34 years. The only thing they had not been able to do before was capture the spirit of the run/walk through images. Last year we gave them 500 images all professionally cleaned up and easy to find. Prior to us coming on board they only had a handful of images that they reused year after year for sponsorship, recruiting and media.

This year, in addition to the handpicked images that we delivered to the charity, we also uploaded the images to our Inner Spirit Photography website.  This way everyone can download their favourite image for free.

Since we started Inner Spirit we have been passionate about giving back to the community that gives so much to us. Usually we do this with donations for charity auctions, but with this we are excited that we can get directly involved and use our skills to help support such an important cause. We do so many maternity sessions and know that some of those moms use the Neonatal Intensive Care Units at the Peter Lougheed, Rockyview or Foothills Hospitals service. I have no doubt that there are children alive today because of the equipment obtained from the donations raised by this run.

This event is very important to me, and watching the mothers walking with their kids and grandkids brings back memories of walking it with my mom, Nola Laurie, years ago.

We cannot support the race without our volunteers, who were probably hoping for a morning of sunshine but came out regardless.

My volunteer team is:

Rob Berrade
Mason Dodds
Drew Gregory
Matt Lachmouth
Jan Howells-Laurie
Philip Litke
Carol Markusse
Neil Speers
Brandie Sunley
Cendrine Tolomio
Julie Vincent
Fran Williams
Louie Zhang

If you are a professional photographer, I urge you to look for similar opportunities in your community to share your skills and give back. It’s great fun, great promotion, and great for the community, but more than anything else, it’s great for expanding the heart and spirit, and isn’t that what photography should be all about?

Wow, the oldies really are the goldies. Sotheby’s photo auction of photographs had the Man Ray image “Untitled” (a photo montage with Nude and a Studio Lamp) selling for three times its presale estimate, $410,000.

This is the only print, of four remaining, that is signed and stamped by Man Ray. The value of signing one’s work is clearly evident. A few years back Man Ray had another nude sell, Rayograph (Nude with Speckles), for $147,732.

In this auction lot another nude also did well, a B&W of a nude women feeding a giraffe.

This collection of photographs out-sold a lot of photographs that auctioned off last April. While the whole lot went for $5.6 million, Edward Weston’s nude went for more than a million.

Christopher Mahoney, the vice president of Sotheby’s photography department, commented, “It’s astonishing to me that the market is now in this place.” It is a solid comment from investors of the value of photography in today’s marketplace.

I find the results of the nude fine art sales fascinating, ever since I encountered an 11×14 nude photo of an unknown woman by an unknown photographer that sold for $65,000 several years ago. It’s such a powerful comment on the potential of our images.

We always think of the work we create in the moment, not pausing to wonder what will become of them years after everyone has passed on and only the image we created remains.

Now there is a good reason to take special care in creating your images. Ever wonder what your images might auction for, decades from now?

Link 1 | Link 2 | Link 3

Interestingly, most photographers don’t sign their photographic works. There are a lot of reasons to sign your images, including the 3.6 million dollar one that I’ll get to in a moment.

A signed image helps with referrals. People see your image, like it, note the name, then give you a call. When labs spot a signed image, they will not copy it, instead they advise the owner to contact the photographer. I had a client do that just the other day, and it resulted in a complete review of all their images, some reordering, and a new session booking.

A signed image speaks to the pride and quality of the photo artist. You generally don’t sign an artwork unless you are proud of it and want the whole world to know that You Did This! The signing communicates this to your client.

Now here is the $3.6 million dollar reason to sign your photographs, from Alfred Stieglitz no less. The Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD) has two nude photographs by Alfred Stieglitz up for sale. They are of Georgia O’Keeffe’s nude torso. One is priced at $1 million, and the other at $1.2 million.  But neither is signed, as it seems Alfred did not sign all his prints. However Georgia, through her companion Juan Hamilton, has verified them as being Alfred’s.

One of the AIPAD gallery directors stated that “It’s a good price. Signed, they would be twice or three times as much.”

Stieglitz’s images are small black and white prints. They are on display at the AIPAD Photoshow 2011.

Let’s see, 1.2 million times three equals $3.6 million. There you go, a reason to sign your prints.