Christmas Photoshoot At Home

My favorite picture from our "at home shoot"

We hired a professional photographer to take pictures of J. Our session would be a 6 month/Christmas photo shoot. When I booked the 3:30 appointment, the fact that J starts turning into a pumpkin at 4pm totally slipped my mushy mommy brain. While we were lucky enough to avoid a meltdown, Miss Prim still decided that she was NOT going to be all smiles for our photographer.

The day after our session, I came up with the idea of staging my own Christmas photo shoot for J. I own a pretty fancy camera (that I really have no idea how to use properly, but learning it is definitely on my to-do list) and I certainly have the time. So, I thought, why not have our own photo shoot and put something together for Daddy for Christmas? He needs stuff for his office!

I took to Pinterest once again....dun dun duuuuuuunnnnnnnn.

The original plan was to have J hold the wooden letters (one at a time) and get a total of five pictures. Those five pictures would then be arranged in a long frame to read I Love Dad. Cute, right?

Plan A materials

We worked on this project every single morning for the past week and I got tons of great pictures. However, only one or two of those great pictures include the wooden letters. I just could not get J to hold them still. When she finally did hold still AND look at the camera AND smile or laugh at the same time, the letters would be backwards, sideways or upside down. On to Plan B.

Plan B - pick a favorite picture and find a cute Daddy frame.

Now as I said earlier, I have a great camera but I am not a great photographer. I got the above picture through lots of trial and error.

Our "studio" consisted of the guest room, 2 boxes of Christmas lights and a package of clear hooks.

Our "studio"

Mini Command damage free hanging hooks and GE mini lights with white wire

These held all of the lights on the wall perfectly

I hung the lights, put J in her Christmas outfit, shut the lights and closed the curtains. The only lights were the Christmas lights.

I did play around with the settings on my camera and worked with a setting that automatically blurs the background a bit. But other than that, it was just trying different angles until I got a shot where her face wasn't too dark. Honestly, I wish I had more to say about how to take pictures but I've got nothing.

Anyway, the whole point of this post is that it's another easy, crafty idea. It's inexpensive and really thoughtful - her daddy will love it!

Oh oh oh! And by the way, I JUST got our pictures from the photographer and they are stunning. Considering that J was in a mood, this photographer is amazing to have captured what she did. SO THRILLED!!!