Behind the Scenes of Our DIY Christmas Card Photo Shoot

Chaos, Creativity, and Photoshop Magic!

I love Christmas cards, but every year I debate about doing one. Mainly because I’m photographing my own clients up through Thanksgiving, which pushes our family’s Christmas card to an afterthought. You know the ‘ol adage “the cobbler’s kids have no shoes”? It’s true.

This year was especially challenging: we only had a couple hours the Sunday before Thanksgiving to make this photo happen. Zach was planning on getting home from college around 2:00 PM, we’d start losing light around 3:00 PM, and the next morning Nate was getting his wisdom teeth out. Did I mention that wasn’t much time?

And, my vision for this card didn’t hit me until three days before, on Thursday. Let’s just say “I work well with deadlines :).”

After I posted on the family chat for everyone to carve out time Sunday afternoon, I started working on details. And because I love a challenge, I wanted to try and incorporate the dogs this year: our two Westies: Piper & Lily, and Zach’s 19-month old rescue, Leila. Easy, right?

With both boys coming home from college over the weekend, I had to make sure they brought what they needed, then I would have to fill in what they didn’t have. I’d seen my daughter wear her turquoise dress the week before—honestly, that was the catalyst for this session… that and the turquoise chairs in our living room.

I told the men in the family to wear light-colored chinos, brown shoes, beige socks, and a cream or white colored top. I was pretty sure they all had light colored, beige chinos, but I had no idea what tops they had in their wardrobes.

Target to the rescue: I purchased various tops (henleys, long sleeve shirts, and sweaters) for them to choose from; I’d return whatever they didn’t wear. One thing I love about “The Red Dot Boutique:” easy returns.

But I had a branding problem. Everything and everyone was “on brand”—creams, beiges, and turquoise—except Leila. Her Arabic name means “Dark Beauty” and she is that: black and beautiful.

Then I remembered: my vision for this Christmas card included pops of red!

How did we every live before Amazon Prime?? A quick search for dog sweaters, delivering the next day, solved my problem. We’d put a red Christmas sweater on Leila and she would be on-brand! I also ordered red collar + bows for the Westies… but they never arrived. So, I just made bows out of wired, red ribbon I had on-hand and slipped their collars through and snapped them back on.

I cut out red card stock letters to spell “M-E-R-R-Y”—one letter for each of us, then dived into my own closet. Most moms do this: take care of everyone else first. I didn’t have any turquoise dresses or pants, but cream dress slacks and a sweater with red jewelry worked perfectly!

Once we were dressed, it was time for the fun stuff: the guys moved the couch out of the room, we rearranged the chairs, I set up a light, hung the Christmas wreath, dragged in the cream rug from the foyer, mounted the camera on a tripod, tethered my laptop, added a trigger, and we were ready to roll!

By the way, there is no such thing as a perfect photo session.

Abby arrived wearing black shoes. Oops. I think I forgot to tell her to wear brown shoes. Thankfully, she and I are close in our shoe sizes, so she slipped on a pair of my beige boots. And working with pets always requires patience. I handed out the letters and we got in position; the shutter started clicking and the flash started popping.

It’s a strange thing though—smiling at a laptop and lens, and not a real person—it’s hard to get everyone looking their best and smiling at the same time.

After the shoot, I looked at the photos and noticed that based on our poses, I should’ve been holding the “M” and Nate the “E”, but we’d shot it the other way around. Plus, Abby's eyes were closed, Nate had a brighter smile in another shot, and Dave had a better pose in still a third shot.

*Photoshop*

What would I do without Photoshop? It took a little doing: several Photoshop layers and a composite of three different photos, but the final result was worth the effort. I switched the “E” and the “M”, pulled a different smile for Abby, and different head shot for Dave. And voila!—our 2024 Christmas card photo.

It may not be truly authentic, but at least it’s not AI generated!

Hopefully, this year’s card brought a smile to our friends and family. It certainly made a memory. My family may bemoan the effort it took, but someday, someday… I know they’ll enjoy looking back at this photo of us (and the dogs). And they’ll be grateful.

I know I will be.