How to Photograph Your Christmas tree?

This is a very challenging part of photography. Up to this very day, my pictures are not good. Either blurry, too warm and dark. I have been reading about it yesterday and a few today as to how will I get that picture moment correct color saturation.

I bought my tree on Saturday and bought decor yesterday. I decorated the tree with a new theme for the year - Purple! I like that color for my tree. I did start of buying purple ornaments last year but I didn't get enough so I mixed my tree with gold. This year I was so happy when I shopped at Michael's in Cupertino. They have all the purple I want. So I finished my tree last night and I start to photograph the tree.

My challenge was to get the correct color setting. After several tries and attempts, pictures were kind of blue, some were green, some were too warm and of course the noise was terrible. I had few pictures of me and the tree. I looked blue. Yikes!

The setting I used was f5.6-8, iso 400, wb incandescent (tweak the color wheel towards blue), exp -1.3-1.7, ss 1", and sb 600 1/16 with green gel. Now when I read about my setting I was wrong with using aperture and the gel.

So tonight I hope I can get my exposure right. Low aperture, iso 200-400, wb incadescent (color wheel towards yellow orange), will start exp to 0, ss 1/4-1" and Sb 600 1/4 with CTO gel. I will cross fingers...

Here's my correct exposure for the night! yay! I love it...