1st Day of Christmas: P-jay-jays

Titus calls pjamas – p-jay-jays. It’s hilarious. He knows it’s not what they are called now, but he doesn’t care one bit.  So here’s a Merry Christmas from our clan in their p-jay-jays!

I wanted to keep things simple this year, so we did a shoot in front of our tree. It took just a few minutes (I confess, it took two sittings. I tried before breakfast and that just wasn’t gonna happen. After breakfast, it literally took 5 minutes. The kids were amazing. The trick was I got them excited about our Christmas card during breakfast and then they were all in – warning: this doesn’t work with kids under 3). See some tricks on how I took them below!

Ok, here’s a little photography trick to keep those Christmas tree lights glowing. I placed the kids near a sunny window and closed the curtains and kept it dark around the tree. That way they are well-lit and the tree still gives ambient light.

Two key components:

1.Use Indirect sunlight – make sure the light in the window is not in direct sunlight, only shade light. For example, we took these in the morning when the sun is on the opposite side of the house as the windows. If the sun was shining directly through this window, it would have completely blown out the kids’ faces.

2. Watch out for shadows – face the kids toward the window as much as possible and make sure one child’s shadow is not on another one.

Phone vs. Camera – I used my camera in manual exposure for this shot (1/125 at f/3.5 with a 50 mm) but I hardly edited them at all. So, you could totally use your iPhone. Just make sure to expose for the child’s face. With an iphone, tap on the child’s brightest cheek. There you go! Merry Christmas!