How to photograph holiday lights

Holiday-light shots fail two ways: strings blown to bare white blobs with the colour gone, or a correct-looking string floating in dead black nothing. Two mistakes stack. The first is waiting for full dark: the lights read best against a deep-blue but not-yet-black sky, the blue-hour window roughly twenty to forty minutes after sunset, when the ambient still holds the shapes in the scene (a tree, a facade, snow) and the bulbs glow against something instead of hovering in a void. The second is colour, and it is the genuinely hard part: warm tungsten strings and cool LED strings share one frame at different colour temperatures, and no single white balance neutralises both (auto re-decides every frame and repaints the whole scene). Set one deliberate temperature, leaning slightly warm so the tungsten reads as glow rather than orange error, and let the LEDs stay cooler; the split is the scene, not a fault. Exposing so the bulbs glow with colour instead of clipping to featureless white while the ambient still registers is a balance blue hour makes reachable and full dark forecloses. Throwing the background strings into soft orbs is a deliberate secondary move (a wide aperture and distance, the bokeh lesson's territory), not the point.

Starting points

Timing: The blue-hour window, roughly 20–40 minutes after sunset, beats full dark. A deep-blue sky still lit enough to hold the scene's shapes lets the lights glow against something; true dark leaves them floating as disconnected dots.
White balance: Set it, don't auto. Tungsten and LED strings can't both be neutral: pick one temperature, lean slightly warm so the tungsten reads as glow, and let the split stand. Auto white balance repaints the scene frame to frame. Shoot RAW: the temperature you fix tonight stays adjustable per frame later; JPEG bakes the guess in.
Exposure: Expose so the ambient still registers, then check the brightest bulbs on the histogram: the strings should glow with colour, not clip to bare white. Blue hour makes this balance reachable; full dark forces a choice.
Aperture: f/5.6–f/8 to keep the scene sharp. Open toward f/1.8–f/2.8 only when the deliberate move is soft background orbs, treated as its own frame.
ISO: As low as the shutter allows on a tripod; blue hour is dimmer than it looks. Handheld pushes ISO up and grain in with it.
Support: A tripod turns the whole window usable: it lets the shutter lengthen for the ambient without shake, instead of chasing the light with ISO.

In the field

Arrive before sunset and shoot through the blue-hour window; the best frames sit in a twenty-minute band, not in full dark.
Fix white balance deliberately, leaning slightly warm, and stop letting auto re-decide the colour each frame.
Expose for the ambient to register, then confirm the brightest bulbs aren't clipping: colored glow, not white blobs.
Keep a real subject or structure in frame for the lights to belong to: a tree, a doorway, a face.
If you want soft orbs, open the aperture and put distance between subject and the background strings; shoot it as a separate frame.

When it fails

Bulbs blown to white blobs: Overexposed, and full dark made it unavoidable. Shoot the blue-hour window so ambient and bulbs share a workable range, expose for the strings to glow rather than clip, and watch the highlight end of the histogram: there is no highlight recovery on a bare bulb pushed past white; its colour is gone for good.
Colours that can't decide: orange here, blue there: Mixed light sources, not a broken camera. Warm tungsten and cool LED strings occupy different colour temperatures and no single white balance corrects both. Set one deliberate value, lean slightly warm, and let the difference read as the scene's own: auto only makes it worse by re-deciding every frame.
Lights adrift in black nothing: The ambient was gone before the shutter fired. Come back during blue hour, when a deep-blue sky still holds the tree, the wall, the snow the lights hang on; the glow needs something to glow against, or it reads as scattered dots.

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