I blogged recently about some custom-made Christmas decorations that I made and that, at the time it was a great excuse to get more creative with my photography. I initially photographed the resin snowflake decorations against quite a plain background. This really do not do them justice and I wanted something that would make the decorations look more Christmassy and bring the snowflakes to life.
Next, I thought about photographing the snowflakes hanging from a Christmas tree, or even having the tree as a backdrop to the decoration. But laziness got the better of me and the thought of having to get our artificial tree out of the garage and assembling it in October made me look for alternative solutions.
The following are some of the backgrounds that I experimented with in photographing the Christmas decorations. Let me know which is your favourite!
The first photo has the Christmas decoration set against a background of an open fire, giving a warming and certainly Christmassy feel to the photograph.
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| Handmade Xmas decoration - Photography tips |
The second photo has the Christmas decoration set against a more colourful background of multicoloured flames.
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| Colourful Xmas decoration background |
And lastly the hanging handmade Christmas decoration is set against a closer view of the fireplace, giving the impression of warmth, without it being immediately obvious that it is an open fire.
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| Artistic photography of Christmas decorations |
Can you guess how I created these effects for the photographs? Read on to find out…
How the artistic background to the decoration was created?
OK, I must admit that I did not really photograph the handmade decorations against a real fireplace. Firstly, I searched through YouTube videos on our TV for ‘fireplace’ and I was amazed by the variety of videos, some many hours long, and very relaxing they are too! So, I selected a few and paused the video at a good moment to take the photo.
Then I began to assemble my photography ‘rig’. I taped a bamboo cane to our clothes horse and hung the Christmas decoration from it in front of the TV.
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| Setup used to photograph the handmade decorations |
I attached my camera to a tripod in front of the hanging decoration and took the pictures. Cool tip eh! Thanks to YouTube, a clothes horse, bamboo cane and a good dose of imagination I think I have created to interesting and Christmassy backgrounds to the photographs.
Mick
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