Christmas Photos

It's Christmas Time!!!

It is officially Christmas time, and for us grad students, it's break time! I can finally blog again. Today I'm talking about Christmas photos. My husband and I took photos for Christmas cards in this blog post. I have taken Christmas photos for several others this year and I would love to share them and how they were taken. But first, our Christmas card and the down low on ordering it. 

 Here they are!! I apologize for the terrible quality of the pictures. I took them with my phone, but they are a photo of a photo. They're actually very sharp.

I ordered foil printed cards on pearl paper. Here is a photo of the shimmery paper. Reminds me of Disney. 

When you hold it in the right light, it look kind of like this. So pretty and shimmery.

I ordered these from Miller's Lab. This is a professional photo lab that requires an application and links to your photography website to allow them to make their decision. I love them, but I know that not everyone runs a photography business. I don't call myself a professional, but I did apply to this site and I now use it for all of my own photos as well as my client's photos. When you order press products, like Christmas cards, they send extras just to ensure that you are happy with all of the photos. Plus, they send most orders to my home by the next day. Now that I've raved about Miller's Lab, I'll suggest something that most of my readers will actually use. Mpix is the commercial version of Miller's Lab. They are also fantastic. Granted, they don't calibrate especially for each photo, they do calibrate frequently and offer the opportunity to have nothing done to your photo in lab (like changing the contrast and color). If you're looking for something decent and super cheap, I recommend Snapfish. I've used them for years and store all of my photos there. I have never used Tiny Prints or Minted, but I've heard good things. 

Now for some more adorable Christmas photos!

Love this one! Granted, it was not easy getting one photo of three adorable little boys all looking at the camera at the same time. 

For this photo, all of the boys were not looking at once. This is a compilation of about 5 photos. 

Here's how I did it:

1. Hang Christmas lights on a blank wall. The kind with the white wire. The green would show up in the photos. 

2. Gather the subjects as close together as possible. We're going to be using a wide aperture.

3. Bounce the speed light on top of your camera off of a nearby wall. I let the camera decide how bright it needed to flash. 

4. Make sure that the shutter speed is slow enough to catch the pretty lights behind the subjects. I think mine was around 1/50.

5. Set your aperture as low as it will go (or close). I had mine at f2.0. It could go lower, but we're talking about three subjects...who are young. 

Even at f2, it didn't work. I had to compile several photos to make it work. The individual photos of them turned out great, but all of them together was quite difficult.