You don’t have to be a professional photographer with these 3 ideas to photograph the holidays and capture the holiday season with your family. Sometimes I think the hardest part is simply picking up my camera or phone and shooting what’s around me. So, here are the 3 ideas to photograph the holidays that will help you capture the holiday season in all it’s messy, fun and memorable glory.
Daily Photo Challenge
Follow along on my daily photo challenge for photo inspiration during your holiday season. There are only 15 items on the list so if you miss a day here or there it’s not a big deal. Just pick up where you left off. Get creative with it and have fun! I think you’ll be surprised at how many special things you can capture. I have attached the challenge here and I will also be putting it on Instagram so we can do the challenge together. Make sure to tag me in your photos (#mtpholidayphotos), I would love to see them!
Christmas Morning Video
Last year I decided I wanted to set up my big camera and document our Christmas morning. After the kids went to bed on Christmas eve, I pulled out my tripod and set up my camera, including all the settings I wanted. I didn’t want a disruptive flash, but knew it would still be early and dark so I used a higher ISO (my camera can handle higher ISO since it’s a professional camera, so be aware that yours might come out fairly grainy if you have an intro camera at that ISO), lower f stop, and a fairly low shutter speed.
My settings were probably around ISO 3200, f-stop 2.0 or lower, shutter speed 125-200. In the morning I connected my phone with the camera and just took pictures throughout the morning while we opened presents. Once I edited them, I made a slide show to make our Christmas morning GIF! I did my slideshow in lightroom, but you can make it in iMovie, giphy.com, or anywhere you can drop in pictures and choose how long they show for.
You want them to display for 1 second or less. The more pictures you have in a row (like a high speed burst of pictures), the smoother the GIF will be. It’s a fun way to remember the chaos and mess of Christmas morning!
Christmas Photo Album Journal
Now that you’ve got all these fun photos what are you going to do with them? Here’s what I do. I have a scrapbook dedicated to Christmas. Each year gets two pages. I put in our family Christmas card, a couple of photos off my phone of some good holiday fun and then I write a little blurb about what Santa brought the kids and anything else from that season.
It is such a fun way to look back at past Christmases in a quick and easy fashion. I make sure and have those two pages done before the kids go back to school in January and then I don’t worry about it for the rest of the year.
I know this time of year is crazy but documenting your holidays doesn’t have to be a burden. It also doesn’t have to be perfect. Remember, photos are about capturing the love and magic of time spent with people you love. An iPhone camera and an untrained eye will do the trick and provide photos of the special memories that are worth remembering! So snap a few photos! I can’t wait to see the magic you find with your family this season with these ideas to photograph the holidays! Let me know how it works!
