Love Life and My Journey: DIY Christmas Photos

Back at the beginning of December, I did some DIY Christmas light photos with the baby.

This was the set up.

I draped an unused Ikea curtain over our headboard, then draped some icicle lights. I placed a boppy under the white duvet cover and propped the baby on it. I think I just got lucky in that he fell asleep when I placed him on the boppy. I had nursed him just prior to starting the shoot.

I have a Canon Rebel Xsi camera and I used my Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 lens. I didn't have great lighting so I upped the iso to 1600 and set my aperture low. I shot a lot of the shoot in Av mode (aperture priority mode). I'm still learning and I'm not completely comfortable with full Manual mode yet. Av mode allows me to set the aperture and the camera picks the shutter speed for me.

I used an aperture of 1.8 to 2.2 for the shoot. The low aperture also allows for a shallow depth of field which blurs the Christmas lights in the background. I also like to over expose my photos by +2/3 to +1. I think it makes the photo look much brighter.

I'm overall pretty pleased with how the photos turned out. I know they're not perfect, but I love them. These are also straight out of the camera. I didn't do any post editing because I just didn't have the time and I really don't know much about editing photos.

Another trick I learned recently is back button focus. It basically allows me to use one of the back buttons on the camera to focus and then the shutter button takes the photo instead of pushing the shutter button halfway to focus the camera. It's handy because I can focus once and then take multiple photos as long as I don't move.