Holiday Card Photo Ideas for Families

A huge thank you to Pinhole Press for sponsoring this post, and for making all of my holiday card dreams come true!

Taking photos is more of an obsession than an art form to me. I used to go to the city and take these really cool photos but now I’m proud of myself to get a non-blurry photo of my toddler.

Eyes closed? Who cares?

Since having kids, what I’ve learned, is to pay the photographer. Just pay the photographer once/year to get some family photos that you can be in further than an arm’s length away.

This year we were gifted a family photo shoot from my husband’s parents and I will now ask for a family photo shoot every year. It makes an amazing Birthday or Christmas present to any Mom.

Our photos turned out so adorable that I had a really hard time choosing which ones to add to our Holiday Cards. I pretty much chose the layout from Pinhole Press that has all the photos.

Holiday Card Photo Ideas for Families

It wasn’t so much that our family is super photogenic but rather our photographer got great shots showing our personalities.

For our family, I knew we were going to be shooting photos downtown Indy (buildings and fountains) and this cool building that has walls with lots of different colors. Because we’d have lots of color behind us, I wanted us to wear white to highlight our faces more than our outfits. This worked out amazing because the city shots and nature shots looked equally amazing.

Sophia, Lilly and I all had matching white dresses and Jeffrey was in a simple light blue button-up with khaki pants.

Same Color Scheme

Chose the same color scheme while keeping in mind your background and what you’ll be using your photos for. Do you want fall leaves or the beach as your background for your holiday photos?

You won’t want to choose a bunch of different patterns. Pattern mixing is tricky so keep it to one or two throughout everyone’s outfits.

Examples of ‘mommy and me matching’ on PatPat

We paid for our dresses (the white ones) and this is not sponsored by PatPat but I wanted to share that they have a large selection of Mommy and Me matching outfits for all seasons.

Location

What kind of background do you want for your photos? It’s easy to find staged holiday mini sessions around the city starting early November. These are typically 15-minute sessions where you meet at a studio that is decorated with a holiday theme.

You could also do a more intimate session with something called a lifestyle shoot where a photographer comes to your home and captures your family dynamic in your own home. Think about what would best represent your family in the stage you’re living and go from there.

For us, we love exploring our city so it was fun to do our photoshoot downtown.

Whatever clothes or location you choose for your holiday card photo shoot, keep in mind that you can use these photos in frames to decorate your home and gift them to family members. I made fridge magnets to go in our holiday card envelopes to our close family. They were a super cute touch for those who don’t save holiday cards but want to have a photo of our girls up year-round. PLUS, I got return address stickers this year so my hand won’t fall off writing everyone’s envelopes!

I’d love to know what other Holiday card photo ideas for families you can share.

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