4 Tips for Great Holiday Photos
It's the time of year for celebrating with friends and family and looking back on the year itself - it's also the time of year for lots of photos. Check out our tips on how to capture great images during your holiday celebrations and gatherings.
Get on their level. It’s all about perspective.
Spending time with friends and family is one of my favorite parts of the holiday season but some of the best photos years later end up being the ones of kids. It’s wonderful to see them grow over time so when you have your camera out remember to be eye level with the little ones!
Sit on the floor or squat down to get a good shot of the toddlers playing or the preschoolers coloring - it may feel strange but the results are worth it!
Put yourself physically at the same level as the kids to show their view of the world and make photos that are far more warm and memorable.
Gather around! Capture great extended family photos.
We’re all about professional family shots for lifetime memories and while we’d love to be in matching pajamas with you Christmas morning, we also spend the holiday with our families in a much needed break.
So, since this is the easiest time of year to capture that one big family photo with everyone in it, let’s pull out the self-timer and gather everyone around.
Cell phone cameras generally need the flash ON for photographs like this.
Balance your phone or camera against a stack of books about 10 feet away from the group.
Make sure you have an easy spot to slide into!
Tap the self-timer option and get ready!
You’ll need to do this several times in order to get everyone at their best (and, honestly, sometimes those outtakes are the funniest ones for future holiday reminiscence!)
Put it down. Don’t forget to BE in the moment too.
Instead of taking hundreds of photos while opening presents, take a handful of the extra special gifts and then simply be with your loved ones and enjoy your time together.
When we are intentional in taking fewer photos the result is more “keepers” instead of dozens of photographs of the same scene (that you’ll probably delete anyway!).
“There is a time for everything under the sun”, as they say! This includes a time to shoot and a time to put the camera down and be with friends and family.
Press Print!
Make memories accessible.
When’s the last time you printed photographs? There is just something about holding a finished print in your hands that is infinitely more satisfying than seeing the same photo on a screen — especially a pocket-sized one. As a society, we produce more photographs than ever before, and the total number for 2018 is projected to be 1.2 trillion!
Many will be shared on social media, but many more will simply be forgotten. Even if you’re running low on wall space, printing your photos still plays an important role in archiving your images.
The physics looking at a printed photograph will not change, but the way a computer reads an image file does change - all.the.time!
JPEG is giving way to a new format (HEIF), disks like DVDs used to be the gold standard (now they’ve all but vanished), and external hard drives have gone through several types of physical connection (and several generations of each). In short, there is no guarantee that computers tomorrow will be able to show the photos we take today.
An archival print, on the other hand, can last for over 100 years. Printing photos for archival reasons is a logical thing to do, but the real reason you should start printing is emotional.
When printed correctly, a high quality print of your loved ones is mesmerizing - and after all, isn’t remembering our cherished moments what it’s all about?