Read her heartwarming story and the secret to her success.
Great news! I finally got some nice Christmas photos of my kids, and I’m sharing my story and tips so you can get nice Christmas photos of your kids too! In the past, I’ve taken pictures of my girls in their Christmas dresses to use for our Christmas cards or hand out over the holidays. But this year, I wanted to take it to the next level by trying my hand at a mini photo session.
I was inspired by so many beautiful Winter photo sets on Pinterest with cotton ball snow hanging from fishing line, faux snow rugs, twinkling light backdrops and all the rest. A la these:
The only problem? I didn’t actually have the time and resources to put together such an elaborate setup.
My next idea was to create a little set in front of our fireplace using my own Christmas decorations. It was easy enough, and it almost worked too.
I created a nice cozy scene, I waited until the “golden hour” just before sunset, when the warm light coming through the window was just gorgeous — but I made a HUGE mistake.
I assumed that my girls would want to stop watching their movie half-way through, just because the lighting was perfect and I was ready to take photos. And I assumed they would love to sit together, smiling and cuddling while I snapped away.
Boy was I wrong. No cooperation, no cooperation at all! But I should have known better.
I must have taken a hundred pictures, and this right here is, sadly, the best of the bunch:
I was disappointed and I wanted to try again.
We had a few cold days with crispy frost, and I noticed the shaded clearing across our street stayed frosty all day. It was really pretty. Then I saw the weather forecast was calling for rain, and I knew what I had to do.
I remember loving these photos on Pinterest because of the bright colors against the neutral background:
I rummaged through my girls’ clothes and picked out the brightest, most colorful outfits. As soon as my oldest was home from school we changed and went out for photos.
THIS time though, I got smart. I brought along their sled, and told them we would have fun sledding on the frost and playing outside together while I took some photos, and that’s what we did.
After we were done our photo session, I still thought I wasn’t able to get any amazing pictures. But after loading up the RAW files on my computer and doing some editing, I’m pretty happy with the result. Success!
So the moral of the story is this: to get nice Christmas photos of your kids, keep it simple and make it fun!
(FYI I used an entry-level DSLR (Nikon D3100) and an inexpensive 35mm prime lens to take these photos. I set the exposure manually and shot in RAW format.)
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