The holidays are a GREAT time to have a camera. There are so many pretty things to take photos of: your Christmas tree, houses decorated with lights, your kids in front of the Christmas tree, your cat in front of the Christmas tree...boy, that tree does get a lot of attention.

If you love taking photos of all things lights, Christmasy and the like but want to try something different beyond just the tree, here's a fun photo to try! Turn your holiday lights into the "steam" from a coffee or tea cup. This is especially fun if you're a coffee or tea lover, or if you make your own holiday cards and want to do something a little different and a lot of fun.

What you'll need:

Your DSLR
A lens with a wide aperture such as a 50mm 1.8. If you don't have one of those right now, use whatever lens has the widest aperture and longest focal length, even if it's your kit lens.
A string of Christmas lights...white or color, it's up to you!
Your favorite mug
An external flash for your camera, or another light source to help light the mug such as a small lamp.

FIRST:

Set up your scene. Place the mug on a table or other surface (when I did my photo, I placed the mug on a cutting board that was on the seat of a chair). Set up your lights. There are a number of ways you could do this; I had my lights hanging off the back of another chair, and used tape to give them a "wavy" steam like pattern and keep them in place. Your lights should be a fair distance from your mug; mine were about 10-12 feet behind my mug. This distance will help blur the lights especially if you're working with a lens that doesn't have a wide aperture or long focal length. Note that the lights should be set up in an area that is fairly dim, so that they show up in the photo, and overall, this photo is not one that you want to take in a very bright area.

NEXT:

Make sure that your mug is in the right position in relation to the lights so that the lights will look like "steam." Now it's time to take your shot. Open your aperture as wide as it goes. If you are using a zoom lens, zoom to the longest focal length. Initially, you want to set your settings to be sure that the Christmas lights are exposed correctly. For my photo, I used 135mm, f2, 1/125, ISO 100. If you need to, use live view to check to be sure your lights are looking how you want them to be, brightness wise. Next, we're going to talk about how to get your mug to be exposed nicely because chances are, it's going to be a lot darker than your lights with the settings you've got.

IF YOU'RE USING FLASH:

Put your external flash on top of your camera. Note that you should NOT be using the camera's built in flash for this, and if you don't have an external flash, use the next section for help on lighting your mug. We want to bounce flash for this photo. The flash can be bounced straight up, but you can also rotate your flash head and bounce it off a wall next to you, the ceiling to an angle, etc. For my photo, I rotated the flash head to bounce it off some white cabinets camera left to add some shadows and interest. Even if your flash has TTL, put your flash in manual mode. You want to be able to control the light here...you need just a bit of bounced light to light your mug, but you don't want the whole area flooded with light. This might take a few tries, and that's ok! Keep reviewing your photos until you get the mug lit as you like.

IF YOU'RE NOT USING FLASH:

If you're not using flash, you will very likely need to add some sort of supplemental light to light your mug. If you set your camera settings to have the mug exposed properly, your lights will end up being overexposed. Something as simple as a small lamp will work. Play around with the angle of your light source until you find the mug is lit to your liking. If you find the light from your light source is spilling back to far and lighting the rest of the scene more than you would like, you can "flag" your light by putting something dark behind it to stop the spill. (Got kids? Have one stand behind the light holding a dark-colored sheet, blanket, or piece of poster board!)

This shot is a lot of fun to do! It takes just a little planning, setup, and practice, but it's easily perfected with just a little practice. As a RI family photographer, it's one of the most fun holiday photos I take every year, and it may quickly become yours!

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