Tip: How to Photograph Christmas Lights

This is a timely tip on how to photograph Christmas lights, but applies for festive or decorative lights at any time of the year.

...getting a good photo of holiday lights involves a different kind of light balancing: Continuous ambient with fading ambient. You don't need a high-end camera for great results. You can use a very inexpensive digital camera and do just fine. You don't even need flash. It all comes down to what time of the day you shoot. And a couple of other little tricks.

See the entire list of tips here on the Strobist blog [via Lifehacker, where there is an additional video tutorial]

Tip: Learn how to improve your photos in 60 seconds

So these days it seems you don't have enough time to scratch yourself, let alone read lengthy tomes on how to improve your photography.

Luckily, idigitalphoto has produced an excellent resource for the extra busy among us. Now you can learn something useful for improving your photography in only 60 seconds.

Our tip is to schedule it into your day. Commit to reading one every Monday morning, for example, then try out the tip that week. Put it in your calendar so you don't forget

If you are tired of reading long explanations and confused by tricky photo techniques, here you can have it short and sweet. Arranged by topics, each subject takes less than 60 seconds to read.

Once you’ve read the ideas and tips, picture in your mind some photographs you have already taken. Think of how they could have been improved by applying what you have learned here. Visualize how you might have taken your photos differently. Already your photography is improving!

The link is here