You want your holiday card to be perfect. You want it to celebrate and document your year together as a family, and to share your excitement about each other, and the coming year, with the ones you love.

These are great things to want. But they can put some pressure on you when it comes time to rally the family for your holiday card shoot. We suggest you make things as simple as possible. This keeps the holiday card experience stress free for you, and it helps to create an authentic, beautiful portrait of your family as it is right now.

With that in mind, here are our three basic tips to prepare for your holiday card shoot this year.

1. Pick Colors that Look Good on You and in the Card

Certain colors work better on film and video than others, not because they are on trend, but because they work best with light to bring out your natural beauty.

When it comes to colors, choose colors that you like, that you are comfortable in, and that are bold enough to appear on camera the way they appear to the eye in natural light.

2. Get Everything Ready the Night Before the Shoot

Just like one of our favorite Back to School tips, make sure that everything you need for your holiday card is laid out the night before the shoot. Once you have agreed on what to wear, make sure that you have it ready to go.

Not only does this save time, it frees up your energy on the day of your holiday card video shoot. What is most important for us - and for you - is that we create a holiday card that is as authentically you as it is aesthetically pleasing. Anything and everything you can do to limit stress and keep from feeling rushed heading into the shoot, helps to create the holiday card you want.

3. Go Easy on the Staging

Clearing out space for your thoughts and your feelings to come through is more important than clearing every surface in your house. Some of our clients ask about how they should stage their home for holiday card shoots and other Portraits that Move video shoots. Our recommendation is always the same. We want to document you and your family in your space in a natural way. There is no need to transform your space to look like the cover photo of Architectural Digest if that is not your family’s aesthetic, or your home's natural state.

Use the time that you would have spent meticulously staging your space to have a brief conversation with your family about high points of the year, what you are grateful for, and how you feel about your friends and family. This opens up the channels of gratitude and puts you in the mindset you need to create a heart warming, honest holiday card.

Special School Day Offer!

For all of our New York City friends who are off from school on Monday, 11/12, we are offering $50 off the price of a holiday card video if you schedule your shoot for that day. We have limited spaces available. Please contact us right away to schedule your shoot: suzlud@gmail.com or (917) 750-0031

Holiday Card Video: November and December Bookings

We do have a few shoot dates still available for your holiday card video shoots. Please contact us to schedule.