A photographic experience shot at 2 in the morning, with Christmas tree lights. I usually do a lot of projects with Mafalda Lopes (the model) so I thought it would be the best choice for this particular one. I photographed at night so I wouldn't have any kind of lighting around us and create an intimate atmosphere influenced by the lights and shadows.

I used Brandon Woelfel as inspiration for this work. I've been following him for some time and his style has always amazed me. So we pick some christmas tree lights and experimented various positions till we get a good effect. I wanted something dark and mysterious, so I switched the orange tone of the original photographs to purple and blue tones, giving a more intimate atmosphere.

I used my Canon 70D, with a 50mm lens. I also used christmas tree lights close to the camera to make the blur effect and more distant ones to make smaller dots. To edit I used Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop to make the basic edition like contrast, clarity, shadows, eliminate some noise and so on and to switch the orange tones to purple and blue ones.
We tried to shoot in very different places around the house, so this is the result of all of that.

People responded really well, which I wasn't expecting at all because this shoot wasn't supposed to be for a professional job, we only did it because when we have nothing else to do, we photograph. It was just an experience to have fun, but it ended up to be one of my favorite projects on my page. I wanted to photograph with lights for a long time and after this, it won't be the last time for sure!

Cátia Serro

I'm a 24 year old girl, from Portugal, with a big passion for photography and digital marketing.

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