Monday, November 12, 2012

The Christmas card project

I'll admit, I hate taking our family's Christmas card photos. It's too much pressure on me. I always have this vision of thinking out of the box and coming up with a hilarious card and every year it becomes more pressure than is enjoyable, especially when I have a child who hates his photo taken. I feel like ours needs a punchline or to go a step further because I am a photographer and people are bored with looking at simple pictures of my kid.

Last year our card looked like this:

194838_10100758444602821_2108399855_o

The caption, Don't shoot your eye out! Har har har.

This year I took two photo shoots, one studio and one outdoor session. I spent most of Friday night editing the studio shots, and although it was fun to take them the light was just too perfect on Sunday morning not to take Dylan out for a second shoot.

So I edited these studio photos and had a bit too much fun with special effects. Basically I had Christmas card writer's block and I was desperate to find inspiration in the form of fake bokeh and Christmas balls.

sticky_edited-1
finished
4x8gray
balls

If I didn't have a promotion for 25 free Christmas cards I probably wouldn't have sent them out this year, but as I was editing the outdoor shoots late last night, the perfect idea came to me. It was simple and made me smile. No big reveal or punchline. Usually, the cure for writer's block is right under your nose.

Obviously I can't post the pictures from the real card yet, but I'll try to remember to post it once we send it out. I also took photos of my nephew for his card and they are so meltworthy that I will have to post those, too. Remind me.