Believing in Santa Claus

This Christmas is the first that our three-year-old daughter is consciously enjoying. The anticipation, the gifts, the sweets, the lights – it’s all very real and exciting to her. However, I don’t think she believes in Santa Claus in the sense that it is a man who lands on the roof and leaves the presents. On Christmas day, we had a party with friends, were one of the friends in the Santa costume came in and gave gifts to the children. Our daughter usually shies away from Santa, but this time, she enjoyed the gifts so much that she ran over to give him a hug. I am sure she knew that it was a man in Santa’s costume, though.

What to tell kids about Santa Claus is not as clear-cut question. There is a fine line between magic of the season that can only be experienced in childhood and deliberate deception that can plant a seed of mistrust to the parents. I recently read a review of an out-of-print book by Margaret Mead, and anthropologist, who addressed this question more that fifty years ago. I am glad that my daughter is not attached to the idea of the “real” Santa Claus, but is really enjoying him as an element of the Holiday.

In terms of photography at the Christmas party, as planned, I took a group photo with the camera on a tripod and a self-timer and some candid shots of the kids using natural light and fast prime lenses (Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L USM and Canon EF 85mm f1.2L II USM) on a Canon EOS-1D X. Here is the most important adjustment that I had to make in order to achieve sharp focus since I started using these lenses, which produce ultra-shallow depth of field: it is not possible to pre-focus by half-pressing the shutter button and then re-composing the frame – the resulting slight change in the tilt of the camera results in an out-of-focus image. Instead, I place an autofocus point directly on the subject’s eye (the one closets to the camera, to be exact), take a shot and then adjust composition in post-processing by cropping.