A few of you have asked how I set up the background for the photos I posted on the blog the other day. You will probably find a few variations floating around pinterest but here’s how I was able to translate and pull this off at our house.
We are fortunate enough to have a big great room with huge windows that let in a lot of light so I set up against a empty wall in there. Here’s the pull back. Light is coming in from Windows to the right and entry way to the left. I taped three strands of white lights (with white cords) to the wall and laid a white sheet on the floor.
The key to getting those gorgeous big bubbles of light in the background is to locate your subject a decent distance from the lights while at the same time positioning yourself as close to your subject as you can be to get the shot you want and setting the aperture on your camera just about as wide open as you can. The further away your subject is from the lights, the closer your are to your subject and the wider the aperture…..the bigger the lights.
For our session I tried to keep Mr. C about 3/4 of the way up from the lights on the wall and towards me (right around where you are seeing the garland and red ornaments in the above photo). I was sitting only as far back from him as I had to, to get what I wanted of him in the frame (keeping in mind the three criteria above). Using the garland and ornaments for props helped because he just played with them wherever I set them down.
For gear, I used my Canon 50mm 1.4 lens. My camera settings for most of the shots you saw were f1.8, ISO 640 and shutter speed around 250. No flash. Just natural light. You really just need to play around with it a bit depending on your lighting situation and what not. Be brave and use that manual mode on your camera or at least the aperture priority setting. I did test shots using stuffed toys while the little guy was napping so as not to “waste” any precious time with him and risk missing any good shots. If you have older kids that will sit still you can get some really cool shots! If only Mr. C was old enough for an M&M bribe. Mr Moose did well though…. Here’s a test shot…..
And here’s an final image….
If you’d like to do a little further reading, here are a couple of links to tutorials that I found helpful before trying this myself. Prop Insanity has a great one with pictures of their actual studio set up using this type of background and Digitial Photography School has a great article on How to Take Beautiful Bokeh Christmas Images . (Bokeh being that gorgeous background blur we all love). You can also check out my Photography board on pinterest for more ideas. If you do try this, I would LOVE to see your finished product so please come share with us on Facebook.
What if you wall isn’t white? Would you just put a white sheet up first and then the lights over the sheet?
Thanks!
Great Tutorial.
Yes! A white sheet would work or some kind of white seamless paper (think large poster board sheets). Depending on the color of your wall the colored wall make look pretty with the lights too.
how do you do this with studio lights? I don’t have much natural light. I tried playing around and its either too dark or too light.
Oh I wish I had some guidance for you. I’m totally a natural light photographer and have never tried this with studio lights although I’m sure it can be done. Can you try adjusting the background in post to either bring the exposure up or down?
What beautiful photos! The lights give such a magical feel to them. Now if only my good camera hadn’t caved right at Christmastime!!!
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Aw, thanks Maria, glad you like them. I hope Santa brings you a new camera 😉
Beautiful photos– you said you used 3 strands of lights. Do you remember how many lights were on one strand? 100?
Thanks Kathy, and yes, they were the 100 lights strands.
Hi Jen
These photos are absolutely beautiful! Thank you for the tutorial.
I was wondering if the lights you used were LED lights or traditional bulb lights?
Thanks
Vic
Thank you 🙂 the lights in the tutorial are traditional bulbs but I did the same set up with my kids this year and used LED and they worked just fine. Thanks for stopping by!
WOW! What an awesome tutorial! Definitely trying this out on my shoot next weekend. What time of day did you take these beautiful pictures? Was the sun shining through the window? Thanks SO much! 🙂
Hi, i want to try this… But i have four kids in the shot. Do u think i could still shoot wide open with four? if not, where would u start for aperture?
Thank u!
I would definitely play around with it. Your not going to want to go too wide with 4 because odds are they will move around a bit and you’ll end up with some soft faces. Some key things to remember would be try to keep their faces all on the same plane of focus, that will allow you to shoot a little wider. Generally with 4 kids I would aim to shoot around f/4 but certainly play around. At that aperture you may want to consider moving them further away from the background. Keep in mind the closer you are to them and the further away from the background they are the more bokeh you will get!
Awesome pictures and beautiful light effects. It looks gorgeous. Stunning photography with white backgrounds