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!
Darren Stokes says
I take pictures in the summer to use for Christmas cards to send to my friends and family living in snow country. lol
Dena says
I love this camera! Thank you so much for sharing.
Our best holiday pictures have always been the ones that let our true personalities shine through. Whether it was my mom and her four sisters cracking up while showing off their matching Christmas robes, or my little boys rolling around under the lit tree like a herd of puppies, the best shots have the power to make us smile long after the attempted poses lose their glamour.
We haven’t had a working camera for about four years. I really miss having the flexibility that a quality camera offers and cell phones still can’t match.
Catherine says
We’ve only had a family photo shoot once and that was 4 years ago :/ maybe this year we can do our own for Christmas cards. You made yours look so professional, gives me hope that maybe I can do it too 🙂
Pauline says
We usually do take photos just for our cards and it’s usually very low key. My favorite memory is when we asked my sister-in-law to take photos of our family at our house and in order to get our son’s attention AND keep him smiling, she played a YouTube clip of his favorite cartoon and somehow attached her phone to her forehead so that her hands were free to hold other things–her right hand had her camera and her left hand was holding our floor lamp at just the right angle for proper lighting. Needless to say, she looked ridiculous, which made us all laugh. It makes me laugh just writing this!
Suzie says
I usually order the photo collage cards because I have a hard time picking one photo from the hundreds we take during the year. However, we don’t sit for an official holiday family portrait. We usually take a family photo at our town’s Halloween festival and use that in addition to whatever we else we like from family trips, etc. Last year, I was too disorganized and stressed out to get my act together and failed to send out holiday cards. So we sent out Valentine’s Day cards instead. It was a great idea! We were able to include Christmas photos and our friends and family loved the surprise of a photo collage Valentine in their mailbox. Another bonus, our card didn’t get lost in the avalanche of Holiday cards. The recipients had time to read the card and really look at the photos. I received emails, texts and calls from delighted people, and I felt like it was money well spent.