Photography corner: Holiday card ideas

We are getting closer to the holidays and if, you have a large family and want to send some cool looking photo cards that have your signature and style on it, here is how.

One of the tricks I learnt, is to create my own bokeh with a super simple tool. Bokeh is a beautiful aspect of photography, which is the out of focus area in a picture, often used confusingly and interchangeably for depth of field. With a little effort and zero dollars, you can command any shape to the bokeh. I created a heart shaped bokeh in the picture above, for the holiday theme. Notice the lights behind the teddy bear. They can be achieved by making a simple mask with items, found in any home easily. Here is the mask.

What you will need

1 black cardboard sheet
1 black tape
1 scissors
1 white pencil or thin marker that can be seen on black cardboard.
1 sharp blade or knife that can cut the cardboard sheet. Kitchen knives do not tend to work very well.
A camera, preferably an SLR or DSLR but, you can probably try it with a P&S as well, just have to make a tinier hole.
A lens with an f stop of 2.8 or less, for nice bokeh. f2.8 or a little higher like 3.5 to 4 might also work well.
1 or 2 strips of christmas lights, colored ones are great.

To make the mask........

Wind your lens to the wider end, place it head down on the cardboard and draw the outline with the white pencil. It need not be perfect, just make sure you get a circle on the sheet of the same size as your lens diameter.

Cut the circle out. You can use a compass too to make this circle, the same diameter as the lens. I used my lens directly because, I wanted the mask to snugly fit my lens.

At the center of the circle, cut a shape, a heart or a star or anything you like, with the sharp knife.

Cut a 3 inch wide strip from the cardboard. An A4 size sheet cut lengthwise, will give you enough strip to wrap around the lens.

Place the lens on the table tail down. Put the circular piece on the lens front and take the rectangular strip and wrap it around the lens.

Use the tape to attach the two together making sure that there is no opening on the side. I used the tape that could be used to seal electric wires. The glue on it is not harsh and I could remove it and move it easily if, one piece of tape did not fit well.

Your finished tool would look like the picture above. Throw the lens back on the camera and slide your mask on your lens front and you are ready to shoot. The picture of the mask is to show how the lights are round in shape with my camera without the mask. When I put the mask on my lens and shot a teddy bear, the same lights turned to a heart shape.

For your photo shoot, you can place any object in front of your christmas tree or you can hang the christmas lights strips against a window and place your object in front of them. I shot the teddy bear with two strips of lights hanging against my window and the teddy bear placed on the dining table at about 5-6 feet away from the lights. You could photograph your kids against a lit christmas tree. Make sure there is enough light on the kids, for a nice shot. I used an external flash to illuminate the teddy bear and I also had some dining chandelier lights above.

The most important point to note is that the lights MUST be out of focus and USE A TRIPOD to shoot the picture, preferably on a timer, it is very important to make your object sharp. Your camera's focus should be on your object and not on the lights.

It was a fun exercise for me and it took an hour of my time and zero dollars to make it. I learnt it from this article.

Teddy bear: Shot with a Canon 40D, EF 50mm f1.8 lens and Speedlite 580 Ex II (Bounced against the ceiling)

Mask : Shot with Canon 40D, EF 50mm f1.8 and speedlite 580 EX II (Bounced against the ceiling)

Happy holidays everyone !