Holiday Parties: Capture the Good Times

The end of the year is filled with celebrations – Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year’s, office parties, and more—and that means a busy time for shutterbugs. We all want to capture those fun-filled moments with our cameras. Just like the holiday parties themselves, planning is the key to success when it comes to taking great party pics.

Plan ahead

No matter how spontaneous you want your shots to look, you’re always better off if you think ahead, have a plan of action, and have the right gear ready to go.

If you’re assembling a party photography kit that will work for most holiday party pictures, there are a few key components to include:

• A camera body that will work well in low light: We’ll talk about this more in a bit, but ideally your camera should have a good ISO range. In-body stabilization is also a plus.
• A fast and versatile lens: A wide aperture is really helpful in dimmer environments. Since most holiday parties take place indoors at night, you’ll need a relatively wide lens with a wide maximum aperture.
• Charged batteries and a large-capacity memory card: The last thing you want when you’re trying to practice holiday party photography is to run out of space on your memory card or run out of battery! Show up prepared so you can take holiday pictures throughout the party.

Here are some suggestions so you’ll have a good time while creating memorable images of everyone else’s good time.

Photo by Eugene Zhyvchik on Unsplash

Holiday picture ideas – create a shot list

Brainstorm a list of the kinds of party photography you want to take. It only takes a few minutes. Here are some questions about holiday picture ideas to get you started:

• Which people will attend?
• Do you want to show everyone or just some key people?
• Are there certain interactions you want to capture to show the fun people are having? The hosts with guests? Parents or grandparents with children? Groups of kids playing? People in costumes dancing?
• Will there be ceremonies, rituals, and activities you want to record? Lighting candles? Singing songs? Dancing? Games? Presents?
• Will there be distinctive foods, drinks or decorations to show? If so, how can you combine them with the people? It’s usually better to show food and drinks on display than going into someone’s mouth.

Knowing the plan for the event will help you come up with great group photoshoot ideas ahead of time.

Your holiday picture ideas list doesn’t have to be exhaustive, just thorough enough to keep you focused on what’s essential.

Posed Photos

If you plan to take posed holiday photos, plan a location with a nice background built-in. That way you won’t struggle to come up with group photoshoot ideas on the fly. Holiday decor usually makes a great background for holiday pictures, especially when you shoot at a wide aperture so the background is a little out of focus.

Candid Pics

For candid party pics, it’s a good idea to move through the room and watch the action unfold in front of you. Candids rely on capturing the moment as it happens, so keep your eyes open and your camera ready. You never know what great expressions and joyful moments you’ll find!

As the official or unofficial photographer in charge of holiday pictures, some people may ask you to take photos with their phones or cameras. Make sure to grab a couple of photos on your camera as well.

Create a timeline

Organize your shot list into a timeline that will guide your photography throughout the evening. The timeline should fit on a small index card that you can put into your pocket and refer to as needed. You may not be able to predict when each event will occur but you can anticipate enough of the party so you have a plan of action.

Plan to arrive early and get some shots right away. The table set with food will never look better than at the start of the party. Or get the hosts putting the finishing touches on the decorations. Shots of guests arriving and greeting their hosts are another early photo op.

Use the timeline to pace yourself so you’ll be in the right place at the right time for all the special events of the party without wearing yourself out by trying to record everything that’s going on. Remember to enjoy yourself, even as you stay alert for unexpected grab shots.

Plan the gear you want to use. Keep it simple with one camera, a good zoom lens with wide-angle capacity so you can work in tight spaces, a couple of fully charged batteries, a fresh memory card and any other items you think you’ll need for the specific situation. Also, set your camera for the right mode, ISO and white balance (more on this here.)

Prepare for challenges

Holiday parties present some specific photographic challenges, but you can prepare for these too.

Speed is crucial. People at parties are on the move so you will want to work quickly. And because you’re mostly working at close range, it’s best not to use a flash. That means, first of all, using a camera with no lag or a very short lag between shots. Also, choose a fast lens, at least f/2.8, so you can use a fast shutter speed.

You can gain speed by setting your ISO as high as 1600. (A word of caution: Small sensor compact cameras may not be capable of delivering good-looking images at high ISOs; that’s why we recommend using a DSLR or larger-sensor MILC.) These steps will let you take quick shots without a flash and not lose resolution significantly. (Working quickly means you may not get the ideal composition or exposure on the spot. See below for after-capture solutions.)

Tips for Smaller Parties

At smaller parties, one of the bigger challenges for photographers is to keep shooting without creating duplicates of holiday photos taken by your subjects. You also want to do your best to avoid annoying your subjects. Candid photos are usually less obtrusive than posed ones, and they allow you to take a quick photo and move along.

Using a wide-angle, short-focal-length lens will help you work in tight spaces and capture larger groups. But it will also force you to stand closer to people when photographing them.

Variety is Key

If someone seems uncomfortable being photographed — or they start to get annoyed with the presence of the camera — it’s a good idea to concentrate on other subjects. Focus on capturing interesting details, posed holiday photo requests, or something else for a while.

Change Perspectives

If you’re having a hard time finding variety in your images, try changing your perspective. Get low when photographing kids, or hold your camera over your head and angle it down slightly to capture the whole room.

Pay attention to the ambient light

If you are working indoors, adjust your white balance setting to the light source in the room so colors will be true to life. Incandescent and fluorescent lights tinge the surroundings with orange or green, not very flattering to skin tones. It’s best to correct for your light source while you are shooting rather than afterward on your computer.

An on- or off-camera flash can add light, counteract the color of artificial lights and allow you to stop motion. But flash is hard to use effectively in confined indoor spaces since the burst of light can be too intense at close range. Off-camera flash units often have variable control or use a flash diffuser to soften the light. Also, remember to set your flash to eliminate red-eye.

Using an Off-Camera Flash Effectively

If you decide to use an off-camera flash for your holiday party photography, make sure you use a wireless transmitter with a good range so you can trigger your flash from anywhere in the room. Pocket Wizard kits are very reliable and work well with as many lights as you want.

If you can place a couple of lights on light stands around the perimeter of the room, you’ll get nice even lighting no matter where you stand.

Try using a diffuser on your flash and bouncing the light off the ceiling for the most even lighting coverage. Mag Mod diffusers are easy to use and they create attractive, soft light. Plus, they work with most speedlight style flashes. They’re a great option for on-camera and off-camera flash.

If you aren’t sure how to take pictures with off-camera flashes, check out this easy-to-follow video with a few helpful techniques.

Focus on People

The mainstay of your party pictures will be the people – but they can also be your greatest challenge. While you want people to look natural and spontaneous, a mix of candids and set-up or posed images usually give you the best results overall.

Candids can help you capture the fun of a party but you will have a lot of failed shots in the process. To increase your odds, try shooting a quick sequence of shots so at least one will satisfy you. Also, the “face detection” feature in your menu is great for candids since it makes focusing more precise when people are moving or shifting positions. If you’re ambitious and have an off-camera flash, try the “rear curtain sync” feature. It sets off the flash a split second before the shutter closes so you capture a sense of movement before the burst of light.

Posed pictures allow you to position people where you want them and, therefore, give you a better shot at everyone’s face with a good expression. The challenge here is to keep things looking natural. This will depend on your interpersonal talents more than your photographic skills. Keep the group entertained with a little banter so everyone stays relaxed. Move quickly so people don’t lose patience. If you want a formal group shot and need a flash, consider using your flash exposure lock. This entails taking a few shots at different flash intensities, then locking in the one that gives you the best exposure so you can concentrate on how the people in your shot look.

Fine-tune in post

When the party is over, focus on editing and perfecting your images.

Start by selecting only your best shots as keepers. Showing only the shots that really work makes you look like the top-notch photographer you really are. Here as elsewhere, less is more.

Then work with Photoshop or Lightroom for some simple after-capture techniques to improve and perfect your images.

As long as you shoot your holiday pictures in the same white balance for the whole party, you can make batch adjustments to the full collection in Lightroom. Are your images a little too cool? You can warm them up a bit with the Color Temperature slider in Lightroom and then sync your settings to make the whole set match.

If you shoot in Auto White Balance, each image is likely to have a slightly different white balance or color cast. That means getting them to look like a cohesive set will take more individualized work.

Depending on how well your camera performs in low light, you may need to apply some noise reduction to deal with noise from shooting your holiday photos at a higher ISO. Pay attention to the results as you go. It’s better to have a little bit of noise than to over-correct with noise reduction and lose all the detail in the image.

If your composition wasn’t all you’d hoped for, crop to get the framing you like. Not thrilled with your exposure? It’s easy to add or remove one or two f/stops on your computer. And remember to finish your fine-tuning by sharpening all your images.

When you’re all done, it’s time to share your images with the hosts and people you saw at the party.

Consider photo-sharing apps or cloud storage services like Dropbox, or you can even consider getting an Eyefi SD card to automatically do the photo transfers for you via a WiFi connection.

For those of you shooting solely on your smartphones, Adorama offers a wide selection of lens and lens attachments for both iPhones and Android camera phones to help you make the most of your mobile photography.

Remember to have fun!

When you’re in charge of taking holiday pictures at a party it’s easy to get side-tracked by party guests, family members, and friends. Some may want certain party pictures, while others have their own ideas of how to take pictures. Remember that your pictures are ultimately your vision. You can take requests and suggestions, but make sure to shoot what you want to shoot as well.

If you’re getting paid for the party pictures, honor all of your clients’ requests if possible. But if you’re volunteering or just doing party photography for fun, then don’t spend the whole night fulfilling requests!

If you’re also a guest at the party, make sure to take some breaks and maybe even put the camera away for a while. You deserve to have some eggnog, eat some pie, play games, and enjoy seeing your friends and family, too!