I’ve been taking this picture with the kids around the Christmas tree since 2013, I wish I would have started sooner! If you want to take pictures of your kids like this around the tree here are a few tips and how I do it.
- Lots of lights, like really a ton of them. There are at least 1,000 lights on our tree.
- Classic Christmas Tree lights (NOT led). The LED lights don’t photograph as well.
- Lens – I used the Canon 35mm 1.4L this year, but I’ve used the 50mm 1.2L in years past
- wrapped presents under the tree
- Christmas Jammies – our color scheme this year was red, green and pink
Our tree is real. We have a tradition of going and picking out a real tree as a family each year. I love all things vintage so I went on the hunt for a “Charlie Brown” Christmas tree. I found it at Soil Service Garden Center in Kansas City. After we pick out our tree we always go to Waldo Pizza which has the BEST St. Louis style pizza ever and is a great family atmosphere.
The next step is to order canvas prints of my pictures. I switch out canvas at my house A LOT! I like to change them with the seasons, kids birthday months, and of course when we have a new family member. So I don’t like to spend a lot of money on the fancy canvas prints. There are a ton of websites for ordering canvas and some are clearly better quality than others. For these prints though I’m not looking for heirloom quality since they are only going to be up for a little over a month. For speed I had these printed at Walgreens (same day service for canvas). They usually always have a 50% off special on canvas. So I can literally do the photoshoot in the evening, edit them that night, upload and order from Walgreens online and pick them up the next day. Less than 24 hours from photo taking to hanging canvas on my wall is pretty fantastic.
If I have more time or want a greater option for canvas sizes I use canvasdiscount.com which is a decent quality for the price.
