7 Tips For Taking The Perfect DIY Holiday Family Photo

-


 

Holiday celebrations may look a lot different this year, but the tradition of taking a holiday family photo continues, and will likely take on even more importance.

Whether you’re sending out hundreds of foil-embossed prints or deferring to digital this year, you want photos that capture the heart of your family. 

“There’s quite a bit that goes into creating an amazing, yet natural holiday photo,” said Debi Cramer, founder and photographer at Plymouth-based commercial and fine art studio Thirty-Eighth Avenue Photography who’s offering on-location front porch holiday photos this season. 

Planning on taking your own family photo? Here are her insider secrets for stunning holiday photos:

“Matchy-matchy” is a good thing. 

Coordinate outfits color-wise. For example, if one person is wearing red plaid, make sure other family members are also wearing red or a complimentary color. Avoid wearing metallic. Solid colors such as white, red, green, gold and black are best. In groups of four, only one person should be wearing plaid or a pattern. And yes, coordinating pajamas work just fine. Don’t be afraid to incorporate textures by wearing a shearling jacket or polar fleece.

When it comes to lighting, avoid the sun and flames.  

If you’re outdoors, don’t shoot into the sun as it washes out the photo. Campfire shots are not recommended as it’s difficult to frame people around a fire, plus there’s a lot of smoke and the glow affects lighting. If you’re indoors, use a flash to avoid a yellow tinge and shadows in your photo. Also, leave any lit candles or lamps out of your holiday shot.

Backdrop is key. 

Simplicity is key when it comes to backdrop. Limit what’s behind you. Multicolored lights on a Christmas tree in the background works well as the lights will fade out. Another great backdrop example is the side of a barn at a Christmas tree farm. Or, just the trees in the background (check your viewfinder to ensure it doesn’t appear as if branches are coming out of the top of someone’s head). If you wanted to get more elaborate, consider the tree backdrop with everyone seated on the tailgate of a red pick-up truck.

Frame it just right. 

Mind the spacing between family members as they often stand or sit too far apart. Remember to leave enough space above people’s heads in the photo too. Otherwise, when the photo is framed, it cuts across the tops of heads. If you’re indoors, keep it simple and take a tight shot. No need to show the entire home in the photo. Again, be aware of any background items that make it appear too busy or as if the item is part of someone’s shoulder.

Mind the pose. 

Try to avoid the stiff “super posed” portrait of yesteryear. If a large family is gathered, make sure that everyone is looking at the camera. Mind all hand, arm and leg positioning. Raising an arm or waving is not only distracting, it may block another’s face in the photo. In a photo with five or fewer - hugging, holding hands and engaging with one another appears natural.

Keep props simple. 

The family photo can be fun and celebrate the season with some very simple props. The easiest prop is clothing such as scarves, hats and mittens. Other tasteful props include a nostalgic wooden sled, ice skates tied together and dangling over a shoulder, someone holding skis up or ski poles (pointed down).

Skip the cheese. 

A holiday photo really serves as a memory and marks a special moment. You may want to refrain from “cheesy” photos of pets adorned with holiday lights, or dad wearing a Grinch costume, or play-fighting with those ski-pole props mentioned above.  

Popular Posts

How To Remove Snapchat Caption From Photo

How to Remove Beard and Mustache from Photos

How to Remove Smiley, Emojis, and Stickers from Pictures

How to Fix Blurry Pictures With and Without Photoshop

How To Fill Black Area Of Panorama Photos With 3 Methods

How to Remove Censored Parts from Photos With 4 Methods


Photo Eraser Tool

Remove unwanted objects from photos free without impacting the background!

Jihosoft photo editor software helps you emphasize what’s interesting in your photos by removing distracting objects seamlessly.


Gihosoft Free Lossless Video Cutting Software

The easiest two-in-one free video trimmer and joiner software

1 Cut video and audio without decreasing the quality

2 Easy to use, fast import and quick output

3 Accurately control every second of the range for cutting

4 Support various video and audio formats

5 100% clean and free video cutter


Gihosoft Free Video Joiner Software

The easiest two-in-one free video merger and cutter software

1 Join multiple videos and audios at super fast speed

2 Support joining different formats of videos and audios

3 Support arranging the order of videos to be merged

4 Support cutting the videos before merging

5 100% easy-to-use, clean and free video combiner


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The 7 Best Sites For Creating Your Personal Newsletter

-
Image
Whether you've just launched your own business or simply want to keep in touch with a large group of people, email newsletters can be important tools. You could be an artist who's just created your own Patreon account looking to share what you have in the works. Maybe you're a writer who wants to advertise your skills to potential clients by way of simple, easy-to-digest email blasts. Email marketing is a great way to handle all of these things, and it's very simple to get set up with a service that makes sense and fits your needs. You may be surprised to find that some services actually allow you to use them for free up to a certain number of emails, which is a great way to try things out and see what truly works for you. According to BtoB Magazine, 59% of marketers say email is their most effective channel in terms of revenue generation. That's easy to believe. We all have access to email, and much of the time we find ourselves sifting through new mes...
Read more

6 Best Ways to Remove a Smiley from Pictures Online and Offline

-
Image
A picture is modifiable in several ways. You can add text to it,  crop it into shapes , add effects and filters, give emotions to it by adding emojis on it. Sometimes, after adding emojis on a photo, we want to view the original picture without the smiley. If you are still editing the photo, you can undo the changes, but if you have saved the copy and you don’t have the original file, how do you remove the smiley from your image ? In this post, we will tell you how to remove smiley from your images. The same concept can be used to remove text and other objects without Photoshop. However, it’s important to know that removing the smiley will not replace it with the original background. It will be swapped with the surrounding background that will make it look like an unedited photo. NOTE:  Sometimes, we use emojis to hide faces. Removing emojis will not show you the face behind the emoji. Let’s check out the three ways to remove emojis online from your pictures...
Read more

How to Get Great Pictures in Cloudy Day

-
Image
  If you didn’t know better, you might consider cloudy weather a no-go for photography sessions. Sure, an overcast sky might put a damper on plans for capturing  natural  golden hour portraits, but that doesn’t mean that all is lost. As you’ll soon discover, cloudy days provide plenty of opportunities for photographers to shine. Check out these ten cloudy day photography tips for getting great pictures in less-than-ideal weather. Tip #1: Use the Cloudy Sky Like a Giant Soft Box Photographers spend an enormous amount of money on lighting and lighting modifiers. One of the most popular lighting modifiers on the market is a soft box, which diffuses & softens the light passing through it. Clouds, which essentially act like giant soft boxes in the sky, diffuse sunlight on a grand scale, often resulting in flat lighting. While some photographers fear flat lighting, it has a time and place, and portraiture calls on it often. For closeup portraits, flat light reduces the...
Read more