This is the weekend every year where we attempt to take our Christmas Card pictures of the kids. Though we usually get good feedback on the photo we include in our card, there is a lot of work and money that goes into this behind the scenes. This is a whole production that you would not believe.It starts with the outfits. Usually, Jennifer has picked out at least 3-4 outfits that she wants the kids to wear. This weekend, Dryver and Jennifer got into a yelling battle about what shirt he was going to dress in. Dryver wanted to wear his new Redskins Jersey, and mom wanted him to wear a nice, hot, scratchy, fuzzy sweater. Well, the final outfit that they both agreed to was a turtleneck. The whole clothing part of this ordeal can take up to 50% of the time built into this effort.
The second part of this undertaking is to find the location. The first couple of years we traveled all over Northern Virginia. We took shots at historic homes, forests, monuments, rivers, and Old Town. We even were interviewed for the news when we were taking these pictures. The funny thing for the first year was after taking photos at over 25 different locations, we chose a shot that we took in front of our fireplace in our house.I also remember Dryver's first Christmas, we took at least 140 pictures with my Nikon F5, which required at least 5-6 rolls of film and processing. The last few years have required less film, but we are still keeping Ritz Camera in business. This year we are moving to digital I think. Since we have the new Nikon D90, with the great selection of Nikor lenses and flashes, we should be in
good shape.Well, this weekend we decided to just take some pictures in our front yard in the piles of leaves. I think that we learned our lesson the first few years from traveling all over the place. Every picture we had included in a Christmas Card so far has been taken at our home, even if we put 1,000’s of miles on our Toyota.
We raked up some leaves and the kids jumped in them. The problem was the lighting and also the fact that Dryver (being 4 ½) and Stryde (2 ½) are not ready for full time modeling. They take direction as well as Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie in the Simple Life.
I found, over the past year, that 95% of the pictures I take of the kids have one if not both of them looking away. There is an interesting phenomenon where many of the shots have only one of them looking at the camera. This probably happens about 70% of the time. The other 30% of the time, neither of them is looking.I will write more about this when we get an 'approved shot' for the card. In the meantime, check out some of the test photos from the last session.
