Creating your own holiday cards

By Victoria Kulig

Every year, I love to send out personalized holiday cards to friends and family. I live very far away from my and my husband’s families, and we don’t usually see them. In some cases, it’s been several years since we’ve seen anyone. So our holiday cards are how we send them one picture that showcases who we are.

That’s a tall order, too.  I’m not a professional photographer, but I dabble quite a bit and know the basics of how to compose a decent photograph.

An example of one of my better shots. T.A.R.D.I.S. is a great model.

Now even though I can compose a decent photo, I’m not looking for a photo I can catch. I’m looking for a photo of myself, which is hard to do. I know not all of us out there can afford to hire a professional photographer, so what’s one to do?

Grab a camera, grab a friend, and go some place fun! My favorite photographs are never posed shots! Think about your favorite photographs from your family albums - they’re the ones you caught yourself. The ones of real laughter, the ones showing you playing, being silly, the ones that capture a part of you. Not the ones where you had to pose and force yourself to smile.

I enlisted the help of Nikki, a fellow author, and  headed off to Dinosaur World with two of my dogs, and my husband. I absolutely adore dinosaurs, always have. The park is inexpensive to get into, allows dogs, and is full of life-sized dinosaurs. What better place to capture a photo showing off exactly who I am?

Nikki is plenty capable of using my camera to point and shoot, and my camera isn’t anything special. I regularly use a Canon Powershot, and it works beautifully for my purposes.  It’s absolutely possible to get great photos with any camera, if you just pay attention to what you are doing!

There are six tips I’m going to share that can help you get great shots catching those special moments for a great holiday card.

#1: Composition. You have to identify what the focal point of your photo is - what do you want to draw the attention. Many cameras will try to automatically focus for you, so pay attention to what your camera is telling you! Also remember that the focal point doesn’t have to be dead center in the photo.

Notice how this photo is almost cut in half - the dog on the bottom half. The focus is on his nose and the weed, while the background appears almost blurry, which draws your eye straight to the center of the shot.

#2: Background. Pay attention to your surroundings. Too many times someone takes a photo, not looking at what else is in the shot, sharing it on Facebook and then having someone else point out some horribly embarrassing item in the background. The second thing to watch for is making sure you don’t have items that appear to cut people in half, or grow out of their heads.

This is a case where I didn’t pay attention to the background, and you can see my extremely distracting TV in this otherwise great shot.

#3: Lighting. Lighting matters. A lot. Lighting can create deep shadows or washed out photos. Not enough lighting can cause grainy photos with a lot of noise, too much light can make your subjects squint. Using a flash can wash out the subject or cause lazer eyes in animals and red eye in people.

Almost there - but not quite! Notice the poor lighting in this shot. The background is brightly lit, as is my husband’s face, but the dogs and I are in the shadows.

#4: Use a camera whenever possible, not a phone! Camera phones are great for sharing things quickly, especially on Facebook. But when you’re trying to catch a photo to print, use a camera.

 

This pretty much sums up everything I just said not to do. Photo taken from the phone, with a bright flash causing lazer eyes and glares on the ribbons,  and not paying attention to the background caught this weird cable thing growing out of his back. It’s just fine for a quick photo to share on Facebook, but it’s not something I would want to print or send on a card.

#5: Don’t be afraid to edit it. While a good photo is a good photo, sometimes you end up with a great shot that has a few flaws. As I said, I’m not a professional photographer, so I don’t get every single shot perfect. For those readers who have Photoshop - excellent! For those who don’t - try Gimp. Gimp is a free, powerful image manipulation program that will allow you to easily modify photos that need a little something more. Editing your photos can allow you to crop them down to something more interesting, or brighten up a photo with poor lighting.

Editing can mean the difference between these two photos

#6: Get a quality print job. Please don’t print your own cards at home. Even if you have an extremely high quality printer, the ink is expensive and quality degrades the more you print them. Wal-Mart has decent holiday cards, and can be as low as 28 cents a card - they’ll even do free site-to-store shipping for you. For an amazing job, though, pay just a little more and use a site like Shutterfly. The difference between the two sites is vast - you get what you pay for.

When you put all of those together, you should end up with something you’re proud to share with your friends and family.

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