A Portrait with Bokeh's Best Friend: Christmas Lights

by Sean Setters

I've been a photographer for many years but somehow never got around to adding a set of Christmas lights to my kit – until now. On a recent trip to CVS Pharmacy, I wondered down the newly stocked holiday seasonal aisle to find dozens of sets of Christmas lights.

When my eyes landed on a set of "icicle" lights, I immediately thought about how great they'd look as a background for a shallow depth-of-field portrait. After a quick checkout I was ready to set up a portrait session with Amanda.

I used an Avenger D600 Mini Boom attached to a light stand to suspend the lights in front of an Impact 5x7 Black/White Collapsible Background. For lighting the subject, I used a Canon 580EX Speedlite in a 24" collapsible softbox (similar product) above camera and a 580EX diffused by a 43" Westcott Optical White Collapsible Umbrella below the camera to complete the clamshell lighting setup. I used an Avenger F600 Baby Offset Arm to allow me to position the softbox above the camera while remaining unencumbered by its light stand.

I gelled both flashes with a full CTO so that the light hitting the subject would closely match the light emanating from the warm, tungsten Christmas lights. Gelling the flashes with a full CTO helped to create the illusion that the light hitting the subject's face might have been caused by another string of Christmas lights just behind the camera. I know that's a bit of a stretch, but at least the color of the light hitting the subject is at least somewhat motivated by the components within the scene. And with the color of light closely matching, I could use a global color correction to dial in just the amount of warmth I wanted in the image.

For the camera and lens, I used a tripod mounted Canon EOS 5D Mark III and an EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM. The 85L II worked perfectly in the relatively small amount of space, providing a field of view narrow enough to fill the frame with the collapsible background and an aperture wide enough to throw the background out of focus.

Here's a shot of the setup that I took this morning:

The EXIF details for the final portrait were f/1.6, 1/60 sec, ISO 200. While I could have used an even wider aperture to further accentuate the bokeh, I thought f/1.6 was a good compromise between DOF and the effect in the background that I was going for (Amanda's nose is still a touch out of focus at f/1.6).

At the end of the evening, I was really glad I had finally added a set of Christmas lights to my kit. They're fun, relatively inexpensive and a great source of creative inspiration – be sure to pick some up this holiday season for enjoyment year round!

You can click on the image atop this post to see a larger version on Flickr.