Wakefield commercial photographer: Christmas lights at Crystal Peaks

After shooting the install of the Christmas lights at Sheffield’s Crystal Peaks mall, Fizzco asked me to shoot some images of the completed scheme so tonight I was on site for the shoot. I began with an external shot of the main entrance before moving indoors to the main atrium. There are some real technical issues when shooting Christmas lights that might not be apparent to the non-photographer. Firstly, there are all sorts of colour temperatures to deal with from fluorescent, halogen, tungsten and daylight lighting systems so getting a good white balance is really hard, and secondly, once the sky goes black outside, it becomes very hard to expose for the lights against the atrium roof. The best time to shoot the lights, whether outside or inside in a glass atrium, is just after the sun has gone down but before it gets dark – it’s what’s known as the blue hour in photography terms. Blue hour is a bit of a misnomer actually as it’s more like “blue 20mins”! I find myself dashing around like a headless chicken from the exterior to the glass atrium trying to get shots before it gets completely dark. Here are a few from the shoot.