Christmas Pictures, 2005

Ahh, the Christmas portraiture session! An annual rite more akin to wrestling with greased pigs than it is to a calm picture session. But this year I had a new plan - we'll use all that modern technology can do for us in order to ease the normally excruciating pain. I figure by using our digital camera (a low end Fuji FinePix A330), we can immediately get "dailies" to view and see if any will work for the holiday card. And we can even print them out on our little photo printer to get real feedback.

First step is getting the girls all cleaned up. They were both worked into a lather because we had, earlier in the day, set up and decorated the Christmas tree. It's a little smaller than normal; not sure why, it wasn't planned that way. I take great pride in picking out a good Christmas tree, so it is a shopping trip I usually do solo. The local Home Depot had reasonable prices on the trees (US$27 - I think I've paid as much as US$40 in the past), and it was surprisingly uncrowded in the tree section. I wandered down to the back and slowly took out some trees, tore off the wrapping and checked it out. After about 6 or 7, I found my tree, and brought it home Friday.

We let it stand for a day or so, and then I did the lights. I also bring up the multiple boxes of Christmas tree decorations, and then all three women tackle the job of putting them on the tree. It's too stressful for me, as there are kids and hooks and breakable bits flying all around the tree. In the past, I've been called in to put some near the top, but as this tree is a little shorter, I was only need for the star on top. It looks real nice and the girls still can't keep their hands off it. No tinsel, thank you very much. It makes a mess all over the house, and if I have to pull another strand out of a pet's butt ever again, it'll be too soon!

After dragging them into and out of the shower, getting their hair combed, and putting on the latest Christmas fashion, we are ready to start taking pictures. They don't normally slow down for anything, never mind after being all wound up for Christmas, so I sometimes feel like a sports photographer, cranking the shutter speed up on my camera to try and freeze the action. But we took a few shots, adjusted positions, took a few more and let them rest. Gabrielle printed out a bunch and really liked several of them. It's hard getting one that has both girls with reasonable expressions, looking at the camera, hands down and the lighting correct. But we got several we liked, and we whittled it down to one.

Then we utilized modern technology some more. I uploaded the picture to Snapfish (because my cable Internet provider has a deal with them) and we picked out a folding card, a border, added some some pithy saying and voila - we'll be getting them in the mail sometime later this week. Add a personalize message, address and a stamp and we're good to mail! You can even have them address and mail them for you, but we had already bought fancy Christmas stamps, and we like to had a quickie note to each one before we send it out.

The picture included with this post is not, in fact, the Official 2005 Arnold/Accardi Christmas Card Picture ^tm, but an early test picture, before we got them dressed up. Ya gotta have some surprises for Christmas, you know! Nice smile from Adrienne, isn't it? That's the sort of thing you have to deal with when taking a portrait of a six and five year old...