Light Refreshments Served

Please welcome Kayla, with an extraordinarily practical guest post for today! The mother of five busy children, Kayla’s philosophy in life is, “Keep it simple.” Since 2006, she’s been blogging about digital scrapbooking and she’s currently on the creative team for Digital Scrapbooking Magazine. When she isn’t playing blog writer, volunteer, chauffer, chef, or Chief Operating Officer of the household, she spends time learning photography and preserving the stories of her family.

The beautiful fall season is finally here.  Every year I promise that I am going to do better about getting ready for Christmas, have all my shopping done by Halloween,etc.  Yet every year I fail miserably.  However, there is one thing that I usually do get done before Halloween – the family Christmas Card portrait.

If you are reading this post and have hundreds of dollars to spend for your family Christmas Card portrait, my best advice to you is to find a wonderful family photographer who will take you on location and get the portrait of your dreams.

For the rest of you out there who don’t have a few hundred dollars left to do the portrait of your dreams
and know you will be going it alone, I have a few things to share with you that I wish I had known years ago when I started taking my own portraits for Christmas.

The first thing you need to know is that you don’t need a big SLR camera for the perfect Christmas card photo.  If you have a decent point and shoot camera you can get great results without superhuman efforts – I promise it is possible.

Pair Up With A Friend – The most difficult thing about any family portrait is getting your family to play along.  For this reason I suggest pairing up with a friend to do your photos – this way your kids and husband will be a bit more polite to the photographer and you can do the same for your friend…

Make Sure Your Subjects Are Fed and Watered – Plan your time line and feed everyone right before the photos as well as bringing along non-staining drinks for the session.  Taking photos is work – especially if you are in a park or other scenic place.  You will be amazed at how simple this is and yet the big difference it makes. 

Arranging and Posing – make sure everyone’s face can be seen.  If you are posing in front of a background pull your subjects out at least 18 inches away from the background so your subject is in focus more than the background.  If you have stairs, use them to arrange your subjects.  It is a great way to get staggered faces and have everyone feel comfortable you just want to make sure the background isn’t too distracting.

Remember the Rule of Thirds – If you plan on taking a scenic shot of your family on the beach or somewhere where the people in the photo will only be a part of it instead of the center focus, remember the rule of thirds.  Many point and shoot cameras have a grid you can add to the viewfinder but in case yours doesn’t, just divide your photo area into thirds across and down.  Then make sure you point of interest in the photo is located where at least one point were two of those lines intersect -

An easier way to remember?  Leave room to the side of the photo…

The most important thing to remember?  Have FUN!  Don’t be afraid to break the rules, try something new and get a little creative.  Have your subjects pose on the grass and get yourself down on the same level for a memorable shot – some of the best shots I have taken have been “experimental.”

Lastly, what to do with red-eye or something going wrong?  There are several photo sites that you can upload photos to and edit the red eye out, change the color to black and white, etc.  When it comes to ease of use, Shutterfly has some great tools. 

If you want more control and will be taking more photos, I highly recommend picking up a program like Photoshop Elements. With Elements you can really take your photo editing to a new level and use the same program if you wanted to get started in digital scrapbooking. 

The Low Stress Solution

For those of you who are stressed out even thinking about doing your own photos or are too busy to even attempt it (that was me last year), I highly recommend that you consider “Elf”ing Yourself. 

Seriously – just grab a few digital photos of everyone in your family (this way you don’t really need them all happy at the same time) and Elf Yourself.  Send the resulting cool and fun video to all your family and friends…and then congratulate yourself on your low stress Christmas greeting solution…

In the end it really doesn’t matter HOW you do it – the important part is enjoying the results of what you do! The important part is enjoying the results of what you do!