How to Photograph Your Christmas Tree in 3 Easy Steps

Welcome back to my 5 part series about how you can capture the magic of the holidays. Over the last few days, I’ve shared ideas on how you can display holiday cards in your home, festive backdrop ideas for your card, and how to photograph your family traditions. Today, I want to give you some tips on how to photograph your Christmas tree.

I think the reason most people have a hard time taking good pictures by the tree is because you’re usually indoors in an area that might not get a lot of light. Plus, in order to capture those beautiful twinkling lights, a lot of people wait until it’s dark out and the tree it lit up to take the picture. So you’re typically working with low light.

Here are 3 things you can do to get a great picture of your Christmas tree.

1. Use a tripod. In order to get a great shot of your tree, you’re going to need a slow shutter speed to allow as much light as possible to enter your camera. Most people can’t hand hold a slow shutter speed without a lot of blur so using a tripod helps you get a sharp photo. If you don’t have a tripod, set your camera up on a table, a bar stool, even a stack of books. Somewhere to keep it steady. I’d also recommend using the self timer. It’ll help reduce the chances of you shaking the camera when you press the shutter.

2. Choose a wide aperture. This is a good time to experiment with Manual mode on your camera. Start by choosing a wide aperture. Doing this will allow for extra light, but it will also give you a very narrow depth of field. That means the lights on your tree will have a glow to them. I would recommend investing in a 50 mm 1.8 lens. You’ll want to set your aperture as wide as you can with any lens you have though. Now, set your ISO to around 800 and your shutter speed to 1/200. Take a shot and see what happens. The great thing about shooting in manual mode is that you can adjust your settings until you’re happy with your results. And your Christmas tree is not going anywhere to play around.

3. Lower your ISO. Yes, I know this is the complete opposite of what I just told you, but if you want to capture how the lights twinkle on your tree, you’ll need a lower ISO. Set it somewhere around 200 or 400. Then, change your aperture to f/16.  You’ll still need a slow shutter speed for these settings, so get out that tripod again. Using a bigger f/stop will give the lights that starburst effect. This tip works for any lights, even the sun!

For a fun effect, turn off autofocus and you’ll get some beautiful, festive bokeh. By using manual focus, you can turn the ring until the lights of the tree have gone blurry. Keep turning until the lights turn into the size circle that you want.

If fumbling around with the settings on your DLSR makes you anxious, then just use your cell phone. One thing to keep in mind is that you can change your exposure on your cell phone. Simply tap on an area of your screen that you want to change the exposure of. So, for example, if you have a really bright spot in your image (the lights from the tree), tap on it and your phone will adjust the exposure (brightness) automatically. If you tap on a darker area, your phone will brighten it up. Play around with your exposure to find your style.