Think about a
sunset.
And a cake.
And add some cosiness
to both.
Now combine
these two (or three, it’s what you like!), what do you get now?
Exactly, a
burning candle!
·
The colour of
the light which a burning candle emits looks just like that of sunset.
·
You put a
candle on cake, something what I immediately thought about.
·
And when all
the lights are down and the only light is coming from a candle it feels either cosy
or romantic. 

This said, I’m
going to divide this post in two parts:
·
How to take
photos with the light of a candle (the subject of this particular post)
·
How to take
photos of a candle (the subject of a post which I’ll post later this year)
Well, have a
great time reading.
I hope you’ll
learn something from it.
I didn't have candles, or knew where to buy them. I'm very sorry.... |
How to take photos with the light of a candle as light.
Attention: it
must be as dark as possible in the room whilst you are taking candle light
photos.
While this
actually seems pretty logical, I forgot to dim the lights while taking the
first photo a year or so ago. 

Ad some extra candles
A candle
doesn’t emit that much light, so I advise you to put some extra candles nearby.
If your “main”
candle is on the right of the subject than put the other candles on the right too.
If you don’t,
you’ll get almost no shadows.
Which is one of
the things what makes candle light photography so beautiful, the shadow.
You see, you cannot
accomplish the same shadows without a candle.
I think that
candle light shadows are the best for two reasons:
·
They are very
visible (They are very dark!)
·
They have/show
a nice contrast between them and the sunset colour of the candle light
In my opinion,
the only way to accomplish this is by putting in some extra candles.
No flash!
Okay, I said
earlier that one of the beauties of candle light photography is the …… candle
light.
So why would
you ruin this by adding in some rather cold and sometimes ugly flash light.
If you’re a
“master” of flash photography than I’m sure you could make some pretty photos
with a flash.
Those won’t
even look cold I suppose.
But for those
of you who haven’t got some type of expansive flashes, please don’t use the
flash of your camera!
If you insist
on using the flash, you can hold a brown/orange sheet of paper in front of it
so the light will be a bit “warmer”
Quite nice isn't it! |
Make sure you “see” the candle!
Candle light is
beautiful, as I told you already.
But it is even
nicer when you include the candle in the photo.
I know that you
could make some beautiful photos without including the candle.
At least candle
light pictures are a lot more beautiful when it’s clear that a candle is used
to light the photo.
There are other
ways to do this except for just plainly showing it.
But that’s
where your creativity comes in!
Just take a
photo, and look at it.
Do you think
it’s necessary to include the candle?
Than include
it!
If you think it
can stay out of the picture than keep it out!
A pretty good
compromise is to keep the candles in the background.
As some
beautiful bokeh.
This is (simply
said) done by setting the aperture to a low value, so the background will be
blurred.
This way you
also can add like a halo around an object or person.
But than a halo
made from distant candles, quite funny I think! 

Some lawn near my place, kinda cool I think! |
Keep the white balance in mind!
The light is
beautiful, but it has a very specific colour.
If you don’t
mind the white balance, than it will just look … well …. ugly!
So set your white
balance on auto, or just experiment.
Some technical stuff.
So you’ve got
the composition?
You’ve got enough
light?
Well then head
to the technical part!
There are a few
things to remember when making candle light photos:
·
Iso
·
Aperture
(bokeh)
·
White balance
·
Shutter speed
Set the Iso as
low as possible.
For some of you
it will feel unnatural, because it’s a rather dark scene.
But I think you
should always keep the Iso as low as possible, since high Iso values produce
lots of noise.
Then the
aperture.
It’s nice to
have some bokeh from the candles, if it fits in the composition.
But most of the
time you want to show the environment.
Candles have an
aura you know.
They represent
and are surrounded by romantics but also by cosiness.
It’s nice to
show this.
And that’s why
you’ll mostly have a large aperture when you make candle light photos.
To show the
“aura”
I told you
already about the white balance.
Oh yeah, shutter
speed.
Since there
isn’t so much light coming in, you’ll need a slow shutter speed and a tripod to
make good photos.
So make sure
the shutter speed is set on a low value.
Remember:
“Keep the aura in mind, do the technical stuff and make decisions. That’s what makes a great candle light photo!”
Mel
P.S.
The next post
is about how to take pictures of photos, so subscribe to the mail list to be
notified!
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