Holidays can be a very stressful time, but taking your family portraits for holiday cards doesn’t have to be! With a little preparation and a few easy pointers, you can capture those magical holiday vibes to share with all your friends and relative for this year’s holiday cards.
1. Determine the feel of the portraits.
Many families want nothing more than great photographs of them all together to share at the holidays. Others may prefer a specific feel: adventurous, engaged in something they love, full of laughter – or more quiet and peaceful. Having a conversation upfront about what kind of feel would be most preferred can help you capture a theme that works best for holiday cards.
2. Choose a location
Sometimes a family prefers to be photographed in a studio setting. Other times, a home environment can provide for more intimate portraits of a family. More often than not, though, they like how outdoor locations can offer more options, especially if it is a family with young children who like to move!
3. Choose a card style
If you know you want a full-bleed image across the front of a vertical card and that’s all you are going for, it becomes much easier to just capture that one fantastic vertical image. If you’re going for a montage of images in various orientations, it certainly helps to shoot with that in mind, as well. And knowing that there will be text across a part of the image in advance allows you to frame photographs so that there is ample open space in the image for text to not cut into the “people part” of the photograph. The bottom line? Know what you’re shooting for out there.
4. Pay attention to what everyone is wearing.
My goal for a truly outstanding family portrait is to show each individual uniquely while still showcasing the entire group as a “one”, as a family where each member belongs to each other in a meaningful way. Coordinating clothing so that everyone fits together attractively – like cohesively blending grays and blues together, for instance, can add to that visual effect. Having a conversation upfront about what everyone plans to wear can go a long way in terms of avoiding a situation where everyone shows up in purple and only one person is wearing red – and seems to appear to not belong with the rest of the family.
5. Book the shoot earlier than you think!
With holiday schedules for portrait photographers, date options can fill up fast. In addition, there are print deadlines, album deadlines, holiday card deadlines – and then there is simply the time it takes to pull together all the addresses and stamps you need to really get all the cards out once they are printed. Book the shoot earlier than you think!
