Christmas Card Photoshoot

Over the weekend my wife and I decided to work on the photo for our Christmas card this year. Last year was fairly easy since Celia was only 8 months old and not getting around even close to the way she is now.

Last year we just sat her in a box in our living room and she didn’t move.

But this year was definitely more difficult. I have an increased respect for professional child photographers.

We had a few ideas ready and spent about 2-3 hours the night before getting all the props made. This doesn’t include the time Corinne spent on making Celia’s skirt. The next morning we got her dressed and started with the first idea of using a background of Christmas ornaments.

She was not excited.

After only a few shots with that she had enough. Next we tried letting her just sit and play with the ornaments on the floor since that worked well last year too. Again, it didn’t work out too well. She was either too upset to get a smile or too excited about things we gave her to sit still (there is one good one in here, can you spot it?).

Then came a wardrobe change and some wrapped gifts. Hey, let’s have her sit on the presents. Nope, more unhappy and escaping.

So we finally give up and just let her do her thing, which apparently involved a lot of rolling around on the floor with all the props.

After about an hour of shooting, which included lots of wrangling, bargaining, comforting, and even hiding graham crackers in a Santa sack so she would look inside, we had 216 photos with about 20-25 being somewhat usable. But in the end, we got a few cute ones and one that will make a great card to send to friends and family.