How to photograph your family holiday time.


In my family history, one of the most consistent activities that occurred during the holidays is that the camera was ever-present. You knew that you were getting your photo taken during this time. As time when on and I began to get into photography, I joined in this trend as well. Soon, however, I started to find myself asking, "what should I focus on for these photos?" This was because every holiday was looking the same. I wanted to somehow make holiday photos a little more interesting. Not just for the viewer, but for me as the photographer. Here are a few tips that I have found useful for keeping holiday photos a bit more interesting for everyone:

1. Start a tradition: These kinds of photos, although kind of cheesy, can be fun. Get the kids in front of the tree, pose everybody with wrapping paper head-pieces, or come up with a new idea. The tradition photos have the less likely chance of promoting any grumbles, as they are "tradition after all". Try to pick something that's fun, so you get more participation. 

2. Focus on people's expressions: This kind of approach requires a little bit of stealth as you must make certain that people forget about you and your camera. This might mean removing yourself from the main area of action and even watching people for a while before taking shots. It's a fly-on-the-wall approach that can often-times create some amazing and authentic photo opportunities. Capturing natural expressions from your relatives are sometimes the best photos because they truly represent people as we know them 

3. Shoot the details: The decorations of the holidays are a big deal. Sometimes they get overlooked as distracting background elements in holiday photos, but some carefully crafted shots of the tree, wreaths, and other decorations that truly define the environmental comfort of what you are used to seeing when you get together help define the mood of photos. If nothing else, a few decoration shots belong in the album.

4. Don't forget the food: Some dishes and desserts only come out for the holidays. Some of them practically define a family gathering. Capturing grandma's famous Christmas cookies, or Aunt Clara's honey-glazed Christmas ham is also a very important part of the traditions we celebrate. 

Hopefully,some of these tips might inject some new life into your holiday photos if you are looking for a little bit of a challenge or even just a fresh look on the holidays. 

Speaking of holidays, we will be taking a short hiatus on the regular blog posts to celebrate with my own family. Enjoy a blessed holiday!


Popular posts from this blog

What Camera Should I Buy?

Image
Photographer: Al Jurina  Reader Q&A "What camera should I buy?" This is like asking what car one should buy. Sadly, there is no simple answer. Because we are all different in our needs, our camera choice might not be meeting those needs. In the end, it is about compromise. Some cameras simply cannot give you the features you want without spending the money for them. This post will give you two recommendations, but they do not come cheap. They are cameras that can do pretty much everything in their respective category, so they can cover a broad range of options for the photographer who wants to learn and/or does. Here goes: Point-and-shoot : These are cameras that do not have interchangeable lenses. They are smaller than SLR cameras, but sometimes suffer from shutter lag or other poorer low-light performance. They typically shoot decent video as well as stills and some of them have zoom ranges that would cost you thousands of dollars in lenses on an SLR. H
Read more

Control How Your Camera Views Light

Image
Cameras don't see light the way we do. In fact, they see significantly less of a range of light and darks than we do. Because of this, they can sometimes be fooled. However, despite their limitations, understanding the different ways in which they measure light can help any photographer improve upon the results. But to do this, we need to understand something called "metering". Metering is the way that your camera evaluates the scene and responds with the appropriate settings. For instance, if you point the camera at a bright sky, it's going to give you different settings or tell you the light is different, than if you point it at a dark grove of trees. Because not all scenes are created equal, camera manufacturers have invented things called "Metering Modes". Thankfully, these are pretty common among all cameras. Let's look at 3 of the most popular modes. 1. Matrix or Evaluative metering: this kind of metering is the default setting on most ca
Read more

Inspirational Portrait and Wedding Photographer: Jeff Newsom

Image
I don't quite remember how I stumbled upon this guy's work, but Jeff Newsom is one of my favorite wedding and lifestyle photographers out there today. Maybe it's because he stands out as someone who is constantly creating something original and inspiring. If you follow his blog enough, you will notice that he likes to drop in humorous comments and thoughts here and there. In any case, he's blessed with amazing talent and vision for creating original images and ideas. Check out his portfolio here: http://www.jeffnewsom.com/  
Read more