Taking the Xmas Card Picture

After Thanksgiving we took one afternoon to get serious about the Christmas card and we hustled the kids outside (after insisting The Boy put on an appealing sweater) for a photo shoot. I had been working on a more "artistic" card design that involved props but since the props were not getting made (carpenter must have taken a long Thanksgiving break) we just needed to get a picture taken and move on with it. Taking the Christmas Card picture is really not that daunting when you have a digital camera.

I really sympathize with my parents who would spend hours (or it seemed to me) posing my brother and I and working so hard to get us to smile because they only wanted to use up a few film shots and I cannot even imagine how slow their camera was in the late '70s  . . . but I digress.

In this century we just stick the kids in a few different poses and start doing silly things while we let the camera peel off 50+ shots then we load them to the computer and hope for something usable. All in? Less than 15 minutes! Of all the shots we got there really was only one where they were all looking at the camera and smiling and had their eyes open which is the one we used for the card, but the one above is my favorite. I think it most accurately captures their personalities at this point in their lives.