A Christmas family photograph is one of those small annual rituals that families either build into their year or perpetually mean to. The card, the framed prints sent to the grandparents, the piece on the wall that goes up at the start of December: they all come from one sitting, taken months earlier than people generally realise.
This is a brief guide to thinking through the photography for Christmas in good time. When to book, what tends to work, and how to get a sitting that earns its keep across the cards, the gifts and the wall.
When to book
Christmas card sittings need to be booked earlier than people think. Cards need to be in homes by the middle of December, which means they need to go in the post by the first week. For that to happen, the printer needs them by late November. The photographs need to be chosen, edited and ordered by mid-November. Working back from that, the sitting itself needs to happen by the end of October.
That sounds like a lot of working backwards, and it is. The simple version is: book the sitting before the start of October if you can, and you will have time for everything that follows without a rush. Leave it until November and you may still get it done, but the choice of dates is narrow and the printers are already getting busy.
Studio or outdoor
There is a case for both, and the right choice depends on the photograph you have in mind.
Outdoor sittings in October work particularly well for Christmas cards. The autumn light is gorgeous, the colours are saturated, and a family in warm coats against an autumn background gives a card the kind of warmth that no studio shot can quite replicate. We are fifteen minutes from Coole Park and the Connemara coast, both of which suit this kind of photograph well.
Studio sittings come into their own for the more formal photographs that go on the wall and into frames. The light is controlled, the background is clean, and the result is a portrait that holds up at size and prints beautifully at any scale. If the photograph is going to live in a frame for years, the studio is the safer bet.
Some families do both. A short outdoor sitting and a studio sitting back to back, with the outdoor shots used for the card and the studio shots used for the framed pieces. We can plan it that way if you would like to get the most out of one visit.
One sitting, several uses
A Christmas sitting can serve more places than people think.
The card itself is the most obvious use. Card photographs work best with faces recognisable at small size, so a relatively tight family group against a clean background tends to print better than a wide landscape shot.
Beyond the card, the framed prints that go to the grandparents as Christmas gifts come from the same set. Often these are the photographs the family appreciates most years later. A small framed print of the family that arrived in the post in early December is a gift that quietly stays out on the mantelpiece for years.
The larger wall piece comes from the same sitting too. A good photograph taken in October becomes the centrepiece of the home all winter, and stays on the wall until the next one replaces it the following year.
What to wear
The Christmas family photograph has its own particular wardrobe questions, and most of them are about restraint.
The safe approach is to dress for the season without dressing for the holiday. Warm tones, rich colours, jumpers and texture, leather boots, scarves: all of these read as winter and Christmas without making the photograph an explicit Christmas costume scene. The photograph then ages well, since it can sit on the wall in March without looking ridiculous.
The riskier approach is the matching Santa hats, the reindeer antlers, the novelty Christmas jumpers and the various other festive options. These can work if the tone of the family is right for it and everyone is in on the joke. But they date the photograph immediately, and they are usually the kind of card that gets a brief laugh before being put in the bin.
For the broader wardrobe question, our what to wear for family photos article covers the principles in more detail.
Including the dog
Christmas cards with the family dog in them are one of the more durable card traditions, and rightly so. The dog is part of the family, the photograph is more interesting for the dog being in it, and the result is one of the cards your friends and relatives are more likely to keep.
A few practical things. The dog will need a person they trust holding their attention just off camera. They will respond better in a familiar place than a strange one, which is one of the cases for an outdoor or at-home sitting over a studio one. And a tired dog photographs better than a fresh one, so a walk before the sitting is sensible.
Booking
You can read more about our family photography on our family page.
To book a Christmas sitting, call us on 087 099 3990 or get in touch through our contact page. We start running Christmas sittings in October, and the diary fills quickly, so the earlier in the autumn you book, the better the choice of dates and conditions.
