The holidays are a wonderful time for taking pictures of your family. Groups of relatives gather for dinners, parties, caroling, cookie baking, and many other fun activities. Photographs provide depth and feeling to any family history archive, whether they are simply placed in albums or elaborately scrapbooked. Here are some tips for capturing your family’s magical holiday moments without devoting your entire holiday to taking pictures. After all, there are so many fun things going on that you do not want to be on the sidelines with a camera the whole time. Unless, of course, you get an amazing new camera for Christmas and you are unable to set your new toy down even to take a bite of Grandma’s gingerbread.
The first tip is a good one that applies to holiday fun in general, not just taking pictures. Relax and let go of expectations. No one likes to be lined up for a drill-sergeant photographer that spends a half hour getting everyone perfectly posed for that quintessential holiday snapshot. In fact, if there are young children in the family, getting everyone in the same general area and sitting still for more than a millisecond may be next to impossible. Trust that you will get some great pictures and your family will enjoy being photographed if you take on a relaxed attitude. Some direction is fine, but keep your tone light and your commands gentle.
Another suggestion for parents of young children is to have a couple of changes of clothes handy. This is not only good for photo opportunities, but also as a practical matter. Kids get dirty, or uncomfortable in their holiday finery. Babies spit up. Bibs do not cover the entire outfit. Having a fresh outfit or two can make for great photos and comfortable kiddos. Last Christmas, an outfit change was all it took to take my overheated one-month-old from screaming to calm. The cute, candy-cane striped fleece pajamas that I had selected for his holiday outfit made him too hot, and a lighter outfit made our day much more merry and bright.
Good luck with capturing your family’s magical holiday moments. I, for one, am hoping to sneak some shots of my son, who is now thirteen months old, while he is opening gifts. He will be immersed in what he is doing, which means that he will not be fixated on the camera that is in my hand. That is what makes a good photograph for me – any shot where he is not climbing my leg or otherwise trying to get the camera out of my hands.
