Things You'll Need:
- A digital camera--believe it or not, all of these photos were actually done with a 2 megapixel camera phone. (You can do this with a film camera, but many of these shots take several tries to get rig
- Photo editing software (optional)
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Step 1
Get up close. For example, every Christmas tree is unique--even if you tend to use most of the same decorations for several years, how you arrange them is going to be different. There are a lot of interesting details when you observe things closely. If you get ornaments celebrating a particular milestone (wedding, 1st Christmas, etc.) make sure you get shots of those as well.
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Step 2
See how things look at angles higher or lower than normal eye level. The main photo for this article was taken directly underneath a set of decorations that look completely different from the side. A fun shot for presents under the tree is to get as low as possible, aiming up where you can get the present in the foreground and your tree with decorations in the background.
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Step 3
Try different filters and effects using your photo editing software--a lot of these effects you don't have an opportunity to use with portrait photography, but you can get some interesting results with decorations and lights.
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Step 4
What to decorate a virtual Christmas tree? Take a photo of an undecorated tree and then photos of different ornaments against a blank background (so you can separate the ornament from the background in the computer). If you know Photoshop, you can layer and blend different options. Most of the work is in the initial set-up, but after that things are fairly easy.
Comments
mechelepellebon said
on 12/17/2008 Next year I will use step 4 to create a virtual Christmas tree. Thanks for sharing.
kkemp said
on 12/15/2008 Great tips!