I’ve found that successfully photographing holiday light displays requires a bit of patience and some counter-intuitive techniques.

When I used film, a tripod was a necessary requirement. That is not true with modern digital cameras.

I’ve found that my most successful images are exposed when there’s still a hint of light in the sky. These generally look better than when colored lights are photographed against an inky black sky.

For these photos at Greenfield in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, I was working with my Nikon Z7-II and 24-70mm lens.

After a little experimentation, I settled on the following settings: ISO 2500, f4, White Balance preset ‘shadow’. I allowed the camera to select the exposure in ‘A’ (auto) mode, but dialed in -0.7 exposure compensation. This was key to avoid over-exposing the lights or allowing the background to appear too bright (my goal was have a dark background, but not so dark as to lose all detail.)

I made some minor adjustments in post processing, including increased saturation, nominal brightening of shadows, and overall adjustment to exposure to better balance the contrast and color.

Tracking the Light Posts Daily!