Merry Christmas & How it's made

Merry Christmas to everyone! I've created a photo today for this opportunity and thought it would be interesting to share a little tutorial about how to use a simple photographic effect to achieve this result.

The name of the effect is the bokeh. You need to setup the scene in the following way:

As you can see the drawing above, you need a relatively long distance between the camera and the lights (little bulbs, LEDs, whatever) and you have to place the glass close to the camera. You need to setup some soft light to lit the glass. I've used a softbox with a studio flash, but I just needed the model light, not the flash. 

As for the camera, you will need a fast lens, at least f2.8 to have good results and of course a tripod is needed.

Set the focus on the glass and watch the lights on the background and position if necessary. Play a bit with the softbox light intensity to find the right balance on the scene, you will need a bit brighter fill light to avoid the background spots to burn in. Thats all. Easy effect, and no need any graphics work, photoshop..etc. This is a pure photographic trick. Enjoy.