A reminder, with some pictures at an event I just photographed. You can use the pretty lights we see all over the place (Christmas tree lights, festive season decorations) as a wonderful background. Like this:

To do this, you need to really blur that background. This means:

• Shoot wide open, or close to it.
• Separate your subject from the lights (not right in front of them).
• Zoom in.
• Get close.

If you cannot do all these to the full extent, you can still get pretty lights – they just will not be quite as big. Still worth doing!

Even

Even not quite as big, they are still nice. I shot these at f/2.8 and f/4 with a 24-70mm lens. And here’s one more, just one more:

Yes, this season affords a great opportunity for cool backgrounds to go with your cool foregrounds.