Tips on using fairy light backgrounds for Christmas pictures

Before I begin, let me just say I am not a photographer. I like taking pictures and I like playing with my camera. A few people asked me about this last Christmas, but I didn't have a blog. It also took a LOT of playing a fiddling last year and I hope I save someone a bit of time somewhere along the line! If you are a photographer (or if you just know more than me) please feel free to ignore this :) x

So to begin with, I can't just say put your camera on x settings - because it will totally depend on the camera, lenses, lights, position and the preferred end result. So I'm just going to give you some tips.

The two main components of getting a nice fairy light background, in my opinion, are camera settings and distance - which I will explain below.

(If this post is too long and rambly and boring... skip to the end and I'll put some main points) 

Setting the scene

So to start with, I literally just threw a blanket over a bookcase in the boys room, then used some heavy books to hold it in place and to hang the lights from by laying the fairy light string over and under the books. A fairy light net (rather than string) would be so much easier! You can also use a curtain pole or something to hang the lights from... and probably a white flat sheet would look a bit nicer than a brown fluffy blanket, but I just threw this together for this post.


So that's what we started with.

Now, to get the cool blurry lights in the background...

Camera settings

Aperture

The aperture (f/) controls how much light is able to hit the image sensor. The smaller the aperture number the bigger and blurrier the lights in the background will be.

Aperture also affects the depth of field. The lower the aperture number, the smaller the depth of field. Therefore if the aperture number is low and you focus on something close to the camera the background appears more blurry. But if you put the aperture number high, most of the picture will be in focus... so the background will not be as blurry.

Here is an example with the help of my little man sporting his new haircut ;)... (if you're wondering why his hand is in his mouth in all the pictures - I  bribed him with sweets).
If you look at the two pictures above the bottom one has a lower aperture number. Because of this the fairy lights in the background look much larger, and less defined. In the top picture the string from the fairy lights is visible, because of the larger depth of field, it means the background is slightly more in focus / less blurry.

However, if you look at the second picture my subject isn't very well focused. Because of the very small depth of field, the depth of focus is also decreased. If I had a small object such as my hand against the background it would probably be much better focused.

ISO

The ISO is just how sensitive your camera is to light... the higher you set the ISO the lighter the picture will be - so it's good for low light settings. BUT pictures always look better in natural light.
If you have plenty of light then turn down the ISO to 100 and just adjust the aperture and shutter speed. If it's still too dark turn the ISO up as little as possible because the higher the ISO the grainier the picture will be

Shutter speed

As it sounds, shutter speed is how quickly the picture is taken. If you have subjects that are rolling around and playing you will want to increase the shutter speed, so it the picture is taken quickly and 'freezes' their movement. But the higher the shutter speed the darker the picture will look (as the shutter is closing so quickly that less light has time to hit). If your subject is not moving (i.e. a christmas tree) you can lower the shutter speed to help let more light in - but if you're going to do this use a tripod or rest the camera on a table because otherwise you will get motion blur from the camera.

Distance

Between subject and background

I've tried to demonstrate positioning in the following pictures. I tried to keep the camera a similar distance from the subject (Joshua) in each picture (bottom one isn't cropped). But changed the distance between him and the background/fairy lights. Look at how long the arrows are to demonstrate distance.
So in the first picture we were standing far away from the fairy lights. They appear blurry and big and round. In the second picture we've gotten a bit closer to the lights, they are now smaller, slightly more defined, not overlapping so much and we are starting to see the string from the lights. In the third picture Joshua is standing right in front of the lights. They are now easy to identify, only slightly blurry, small and the blanket behind the lights is visible.

So... the closer the subject gets to the fairy lights, the smaller and more defined the lights become. The further away the subject is from the background the more blurry the background gets.

Distance between camera and subject

And now the other part of the distance equation. The distance from the subject to the camera. So in these pictures Joshua was standing in the same spot. In the first one I stood close to him and focused the camera on him. The background was fairly blurry (but not that much, because as discussed above he was standing close to the lights). In the second picture I moved back and took the picture with the camera further away from him. He didn't move, but as you can see the background is even more defined. The further the camera away from the subject the more focussed the whole picture will be / the less the background will be blurry


So there we have it. A combination of camera settings and distances to give you different Christmassy effects! I hope this helps someone out there because I remember last year googling for hours looking at different examples and tutorials... And by that point I was so over the pretty fairy lights background... haha.

To sum up / main points

* Try to take the picture where there is a lot of space and good natural light.
 
Aperture = The lower the aperture the bigger and less defined the lights will be. The blurrier the background will be as a whole.

ISO = The higher the ISO the brighter (but grainier the picture). The lower the ISO the darker (but clearer) the picture will be.

Shutter speed = The higher the shutter speed the less the main subject will blur if they are moving! But the darker the picture will be

* Play around with all three settings together... try a low aperture and ISO but higher shutter speed to begin with. If you lower the aperture then also lower the ISO and try increasing shutter speed. If you have to increase shutter speed because your subject is moving try lowering the aperture or if it's already at the lowest increase ISO. etc.

Distance between the background and the subject = The nearer the subject (e.g. kids) to the fairy lights the more defined the lights will become. Move the subject further away from the lights and the lights will appear bigger, blurrier, overlap etc.

Distance between the camera and the subject = The nearer the camera to the subject the more the subject will be focused and the background will be blurred. The further away you get with the camera, the more the whole picture will become focused.

* Play around with distance. Start with your subject quite far in front of the background, but your camera quite close to the subject and take it from there