6 quick tips for getting better Christmas photos

Christmas presents an abundance of photographic opportunities, from the smallest festive details to groups shots filled with merriment.

It can be, however, a tricky time of year to capture images, thanks to the cold and gloomy weather outdoors and a variety of artificial lighting and atypical situations challenging you indoors.

Here are six quick photography tips to help you get the most out of your picture taking this festive season.

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Better Christmas photos: 1. When people are your priority, tell your camera!

You’ll no doubt be capturing images of friends and family, whether it’s at the dinner table, opening presents in front of the tree or a cheeky shot of grandpa snoozing in front of the television.

Regardless of the situation, there are a number of ways in which you can make sure your camera knows when people are the priority.

Perhaps the most useful is face detection, as this will attempt to prioritise all faces in the frame for focus and exposure over other details.

On some compacts and mirrorless cameras, there may be other options such as smile detection which may help to capture these images at the ideal moment, or blink detection which may highlight when someone has their eyes closed, so dig around the menu to investigate what’s available.

If you own a relatively recent camera with a touchscreen and you’re only capturing a single person in a shot, you could also use the option to focus and expose for your subject by touching their face on the screen, as you may be able to do this faster and more precisely than by conventional means.

The other thing to be aware of is your shutter speed. For posed group shots you shouldn’t need something too high, although beware of your camera’s image stabilisation system which may cause the shutter speed to be lower than you want it for such an image.

Generally, anything under 1/40sec should be avoided, so try to make sure your camera is set to something higher to suit the situation.

For particularly animated children – or indeed, other livelier members of the family – think about increasing this further to make sure any movement is kept sharp, and if conditions are particularly challenging, consider using flash.

SEE MORE: Christmas Portrait Ideas: a simple flash technique for natural-looking photos

Better Christmas photos: 2. Go close

Christmas is a great time to crack out the macro lens, or at least focus closer than you may otherwise, as there are plenty of smaller details typical of the season that deserve to be captured in their own right.

A close-up of a bauble on the tree; a festive bow or a ribbon wrapped around a present; the holly on top of the Christmas pudding – all of these things say Christmas without you needing to contextualise them with other details.

You’re likely to end up with a more interesting selection of images too if you’re not always focusing on the bigger picture.

It also pays to think about your camera’s colour mode here; while you may want to stick to standard or portrait options for more natural people shots, Christmas tree decorations and other festive embellishments can benefit from a more vibrant option to give images more impact.

SEE MORE: 5 Christmas picture ideas that will impress your friends and family

Better Christmas photos: 3. Deal with colour casts like a pro

Auto white balance systems can easily get confused when there’s a variety of different lighting sources, and this is very much the case at Christmas.

The heavier reliance on artificial lighting sources doesn’t make things easier here too, so it’s a good idea to take preventative steps to ensure colours turn out as you expect.

Obviously if you can set the camera to a specific white balance preset and get good results you should do this first, although it may be difficult to select the right one if there is more than one source of light.

If shooting indoors under a stable set of lighting conditions, try adjusting the colour temperature until you’re happy with the result or capture a neutral target (such as grey card) which can be used as a reference for your camera.

Be careful if your camera activates the flash as this can lead to colour casts if you’ve set a non-flash-friendly white balance in advance, and make sure to shoot Raw so that you can correct colour casts later on in post production without degrading your image.

SEE MORE: How to remove bad colour casts using Adobe Camera Raw

Better Christmas photos: 4. Capture kids at their level

Kids love Christmas so what better time to capture their expressions of joy and surprise? Literally getting down to their level can help you to take photos with more pleasing composition, and this is made easier if your camera has a rear display which tilts in some way.

It also helps to anticipate good photographic opportunities if you know what’s coming, such as when they’re opening presents.

Pre-focusing your camera on their faces, for example, will mean you can get the shot at the prime moment rather than waiting for it to focus as opportunity occurs.

SEE MORE: Child Photography: quick tips for candid portraits of kids

Better Christmas photos: 5. Keep a camera close to hand

It’s not exactly practical to always have a DSLR to hand, but Christmas always gifts a few unexpected moments that you may want to relive.

Try to keep a small camera of some kind close to hand, be it a mirrorless camera, a compact or even just your phone, so that you can be prepared for spontaneous events, from the lighting of the Christmas pudding to the tree falling over or any other mishaps.

Obviously make sure you have a camera to hand when opening presents too!

SEE MORE: Free family portrait photography cheat sheet

Better Christmas photos: 6. Don’t forget about continuous shooting

We don’t tend to associate continuous shooting with capturing images indoors, as this is generally called upon when photographing sports and other outdoors-based action photography.

Christmas is, however, filled with moments that pass in seconds – and it’s all too easy to miss them if you shoot too soon or too late.

Switching to your camera’s continuous shooting option will increase your chance of getting the shot at the very right moment, so take advantage of this.

If needing to shoot for longer than a couple of seconds or so, see if you can switch to a slower burst option so that your buffer doesn’t fill up too soon, as this may prevent you from taking any more images.

It’s also worth remembering that your camera will (almost certainly) offer video recording which can be used in such a situation too, so make sure you’re familiar with this if you want to capture more than just images this Christmas.

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