12 Days Of Holiday Photos - Documenting Your Family This Holiday Season
The 12 Days of Christmas
The 12 days of Christmas is not only a famous holiday song, but can be a fun personal family tradition leading up to the holidays. Now, I know that not everyone celebrates Christmas, and I believe that this holiday list can be applied to many winter holidays, and Birthday celebrations too. For example, you can do the last 12 days of the year, or the 4 days leading up to and the 8 days of Hanukkah. But, I want to share with you the ‘12 days of Holiday Photos’ that everyone can include in their holiday memory making.
12 DAYS OF HOLIDAY PHOTOS
12. Shopping
The holidays are filled with extra shopping…wheather it’s for gifts or groceries, we all spend a bit of extra time at the stores this season of the year. Document those memories, and create little time capsules that will show how your family has grown over the years.
11. Baking
A big part of our holiday traditions include baking cookies, making fudge, and planning lots of yummy treats for our family, and for Santa too. Capturing images of my kids baking is always a challenge as I’m usually baking too…but as they’re getting older it’s becoming much easier as they are now taking the lead with baking.
10. Sending And Receiving Cards And Packages
Each winter season we send out cards to our friends and family far and wide. This is a favorite part of our holiday season each year, with lots of creativity going into our family card, and then lots of time enjoyed looking at those we receive. In addition, many of our family members live outside of Portland…and we love to put together fun packages for them as gifts. And, you can be sure that my girls love receiving packages too!
9. Hanging Outdoor Lights
We have some really fun colorful ‘balls’ that we hang in our trees each year. It’s a fairly simple decor addition that we leave up through Lunar New Year. It brightens our house and neighborhood, and we receive lots of comments on them as well. Each year I love to take photos of the girls hanging up the lights, and to compare how they’ve grown over time.
8. Enjoying a Warm Holiday Beverage
Do you have a favorite holiday drink? We love to see what holiday cups Starbucks has each year as we enjoy some warm holiday seasonal drinks.
7. Travel
We often travel for the winter holidays for vacation, to see family, or to celebrate the new year, and I love capturing the mundane parts of travel, as well as the fun and exciting parts. Sitting on the plane, waiting for a taxi, and checking out the holiday decorations as we travel are a few of my favorite activities to photograph. Airplanes and trains have really fun window light to use for photography too.
6. Enjoying Holiday Decorations Around Town
Enjoying large Christmas trees, and store holiday lights and displays are a fun part of the winter holiday season, and make for fun photographs of our families as well. Children in particular are always in awe at the beauty of holiday decorations.
5. Decorating The Tree & House
One of our favorite holiday traditions is decorating our tree and home for the winter season. We’ve had a variety of tree styles over the years and are lucky to have an heirloom tree in our current home. Decorating it with ornaments from our travels brings back amazing memories each year, and the cats really love to explore and hang out under the tree too! We also love to display nutcrackers in our home as well, and this year are painting some of our own.
4. Attending A Holiday Performance
We’ve taken the girls for many years now to see The Nutcracker at various theatres in Portland. It’s always a fun time to see what they remember from past performances, and to compare that to this years show.
3. Gingerbread Construction
I will fully admit that this is not one of my best activities, but the kids LOVE to do it each year… so we always try to improve on our Gingerbread House Construction. The good news is that it’s fun to photograph!
2. Holiday Lego Building
My girls have enjoyed the holiday Lego advent calendars for years, and have had a blast building some special North Pole related Lego sets over the last few years. They love them so much that they don’t want to put them away at the end of the season.
1. Holiday Books
We have many special holiday books that we’ve collected over the years, and even thought the kids are older they love to sit and enjoy the stories, artwork, and tradition held within our books. They even re-read the board books although they’ve definitely outgrown that stage. Capturing images of my girls reading (and my clients too) is one of my favorite activities and inspiration for documentary photography.
The Best Camera Is The One You Have With You
Now, you don’t need to be a professional photographer to capture fun holiday photos of your family. They say that the best camera is the one that you have with you…so think of all of the holiday traditions that your family holds dear that you’d like to photograph, and make your own list of 12 Holiday Photos to capture this year! I’d love to see what you come up with, tag me on Instagram so I can check out what you create.
Get In Those Photos
To ensure you are in your holiday photos, be sure to hand off your camera or phone to others so that you are documented in your family memories as well…or consider planning a holiday activity photo session! Reach out if you’d like to learn more.