Every year since the kids were born, I would take them to a professional photographer for their annual Christmas card photo. This year, most photographers booked up well in advance (as early as late September) for any mini-Christmas photo session. We had an amazing photographer back in London, Ontario and since moving to the GTA, I haven’t found someone that I love as much as I did back in London. As I was struggling to find any photographer (for a decent price) my husband suggested that we do it ourselves. I thought….why not?! I was up for the challenge.
I did some research, mostly on Pinterest, and the first thing I learned that the mini-session required some sort of theme. Originally we were going to do it in our backyard as its very wide with lots of beautiful trees, but daylight is limited during this time of year. So I thought, why not incorporate a theme of red and gold around our fireplace? I already had some decor from last Christmas (the trees and pillows) and the rest I picked up from Homesense. I found a beautiful argyle blanket, wooden present boxes and a banner. We dressed our boys in red plaid shirts and voila! We had our mini session.
The other key is to have a decent camera, although most cellphones today have pretty good ones in them. Fortunately, we have a pretty decent camera (a Rebel Canon) and I used my husband’s MAC to edit the photos afterwards.
It was fun and it lasted about 10 minutes. The key to get kids to cooperate during a photo session is to make sure that they are well-rested and fed, so we did ours after dinner. From experience I learned that a mini session will not work if your child is tired, cranky or hungry. We played some Christmas music in the background and had fun. Really, all we wanted was one decent photo for their Christmas card this year and they all ended up being phenomenal. I am really glad that they turned out well and this is perhaps a new Christmas tradition that we will continue in our new home.
