This year, I wanted to take a family picture to send out as a holiday card. However, our busy schedule did not permit the booking a professional photographer to take our pictures with enough time for editing, printing, and actually getting them sent out before the holidays. And then, I casually mentioned the cost to my husband and he said that we could buy a nice camera for that amount and take our own pictures! And he’s right.
So, I ditched the professional photographer idea and decided to turn my living room into a photo studio that I could reuse year after year instead. And in case you need a little inspiration, I’m going to share how we did at a fraction of the cost.
I’m excited to partner with Olympus to offer you this DIY option for your family’s holiday card photos. The bonus is that you’ll own your photos, print as many as you want, and be able to share them with family and friends!
As someone who takes a lot of food and lifestyle photography, owning the rights to the photos I take is very important. Something I can’t do with professionally taken photos. So, to take today’s photos, I used my new Olympus camera, turned my living room into a photography studio, set up a tripod, and snapped away!
After a few days of stalking Pinterest, I decided I wanted to have a backdrop that was timeless, that we could use year after year regardless of the theme and color scheme we chose to wear. Eventually, all the idea searching gave me the perfect vision of what I wanted for this year.
So here is how we did it. I went to the fabric shop and asked for the most affordable, non-see-through, white material that would drape nicely. Then, I purchased strands of white holiday lights to hang over the white backdrop.
To create a “studio” in my living room, I moved all the furniture out of the way and hung the backdrop over a very large mirror that already hangs to the wall. Otherwise, I would have draped it over our bookcase. We secured the lights to the fabric with office clips and plugged them into a power strip. The lights over the white material provided the perfect glow I was after.
The biggest struggle was figuring out how to squeeze six people into a frame, with our teenager being over six feet tall and the little one barely three feet. Our dining room bench came to the rescue, and we squeezed ourselves into the frame. I also held the sides of the material with pushpins onto the wall and blurred the sides with free editing software.
If you are wondering how exactly did we manage to take our pictures on our own without someone else snapping them for us; I’ll tell you that the secret is “in” the camera. The Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark IV has a built-in WIFI. So, I downloaded the OI Share app to my phone and synced the camera to it. This way, all I had to do is push the button on my phone (hidden behind one of my kids), and the camera would instantly snap the picture. This feature is much better than the 3-second auto-timer built into most cameras, eliminating the infamous “run” back.
The built-in app also allows me to sync my photos with my phone to either edit them in one of my apps or share them with my friends and family on social media.
Using my Olympus camera, I was able to get all the shots I needed and a few very candid ones that have already become favorites.
The best part of the shoot was our family laughing together as we took extra silly photos and dancing to holiday jingles. I had a great time talking pictures with my family, at home, and I get to keep some incredible pictures for many years to come.
Happy Holidays!
Cari says
Great pictures! My favorite Christmas card moments are the cards where we’ve used blooper pictures. You try so hard to get a good group photo but inevitably there’s a baby crying, someone is blinking, yawning, talking, making a goofy face etc… But in my opinion those are the funniest photos! We normally use our phones to take pictures simply because it is always handy.
Rachel D says
We always use photos of places we’ve visited throughout the year – or milestones. But all the photos are taken with our iPhones so our holiday cards are never crisp!
Yeidie says
Love to make collages with memorable moments of the year.
And also love to make calendars as gifts. Would love to win this camera. I am a photography passionate!
Elizabeth says
I have a small family so we don’t typically do Christmas cards but I always get them from all of my married friends and they always have the cutest pictures of their weddings, dogs and kids. I’m of the single ones left and so is my roommate so we decided to take pictures of ourselves and send them to all of our married friends for Christmas. It was a fun change from all the normal cards they get with the babies and dog families. I would love to win a new camera!
Victoria Isabela says
One favorite holiday card moment was my first time in Puerto Rico when I was a little girl during Christmas vacation! Not only was it a perfect season to explore the island, it helped me to learn so much more about my own culture. The holidays are a time to be with family and sometimes capturing that in a photograph is all you need to bring you back to a happy memory! Lately, I have been trying to become more creative with my photographs and have been using a fuji instax mini camera to capture my best photos. It has been a hit at family parties with it’s instant mini film photos it self-prints out! Candid photos are fun and really showcase a true moment in time. My family and I do take family photos ALL the time, especially for your holiday cards, like Laura we take them at home too and create our own mini photo studio!