If you can control the focus on your camera, you do create a pretty amazing feat when taking Christmas light photos with your camera. If you’ve ever taken a picture of someone with points of light in the background, you may have noticed them turn into round blobs. Using a small piece of black construction paper, you can control the shape of the little blobs.
In the example to the left, I cut a little tree out of a piece of black paper and positioned it right up next to the lens. When I put the entire picture out of focus, I get the little colored trees in the image. Pretty cool, huh?
You can also do the trick with other subjects in the pictures. Position your kids or other subject in front of the Christmas tree and take their pictures. Make sure you don’t let flash hit the lights, or it could ruin the effect. Like I did, you may also have to play around with the placement of the paper to get the best results, but that is one of the advantages of digital.