X-mas Photography

Christmas time nowadays is a festive event all around the world. In many places this is the time to decorate buildings, trees, and everything with lights and strange stuff.

It is definitely the time for night photography in color.

It's also an event for children and families. With all the decoration this gives rise to plenty of interesting portraits of kids wearing ridiculous costumes and being irritated by what their parents are doing to them when setting up spectacular sceneries. Such as the little baby wearing the santa claus cap in the sledge with the reindeer.


And if it's not about children and lights then it's about snow and winter.

Hence, the elements of Christmas photography are simple. It's more about finding the right exposure best representing all those little lights and decorations.

Merry Christmas!!!

Theme: The Lighted Tent

Arctic Dream - Paul Zizka (500px)

A common theme in landscape photography at night is the lighted tent.

This motif gives interesting images. The lighted, and most of the examples warmly coloured, tent in contrast to the cold colours of the nightly landscape.

These pictures are perfect examples of transporting the scenery experienced with all human senses into a static image.

The cosy warmth of the protective tent combined with:

- the cold of the night

- the ambient light landscape

- the starry sky

- the milky way

- northern light phenomena

- or just the dark blue sky of a longtime exposure

Sahale Arm Milky Way - Jason Groepper (500px)

Some of these shots need a little bit of planning. Planning in terms of the right framing of the landscape, the right light conditions, the right weather conditions.

For a milky way scenery some more techniques are needed.
Find a tutorial to learn about the right exposure at: link



But not only milky way sceneries are interesting night shots. Some star trails can make a nice background for the lighted tent too.

Fragment 8 - Gabi Matei (500px)

Aerial Photography: Zurich by night

http://www.helvetiabynight.com/ features two very interesting night photography contributions from the city of Zurich, Switzerland.

The movie:

This was a co-production of photographers Alessandro Della Bella und Christian Mülhauser showing impressive time-lapse sequences from the city of Zurich at night.

360 degree panorama:
Following the link you take off on airborne perspective above the nightly city of Zurich.
The panorama allows to move your point of view by 360 degrees and consists of twelve different viewpoints. - An impressive piece of interactive photography.

To further improve the viewers virtual reality experience it is possible to use the Google Cardboard together with your smartphone: VR manual