{"id":125,"date":"2014-01-02T20:52:00","date_gmt":"2014-01-02T20:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/debralwallace.com\/the-story-of-my-christmas-card-candid-family-portraits-on-the-westside-rochester-ny\/"},"modified":"2014-01-02T20:52:00","modified_gmt":"2014-01-02T20:52:00","slug":"the-story-of-my-christmas-card-candid-family-portraits-on-the-westside-rochester-ny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/debralwallace.com\/the-story-of-my-christmas-card-candid-family-portraits-on-the-westside-rochester-ny\/","title":{"rendered":"The Story of My Christmas Card ~ Candid Family Portraits on the Westside, Rochester, NY"},"content":{"rendered":"
When I look at Christmas lights, snow and emails littering my screen with coupon codes and discount offers, I also want to see a fridge smothered in cards. Any kind is fine – preferably the type that lay flat with a great photo (ones I took are especially fun) and some sort of Holiday-ish greeting is fantastic. Some people who have it together even hire me in September for this picture, intended to grace the front of their Christmas cards three months later.<\/p>\n
Several years ago I set out to do what is condescendingly called shoot and burn photography in the photog world. I found most people hiring me actually wanted products and were excited about them, which gave me the bug too. I discovered a fantastic lab that prints custom everything and have now given me a card addiction.<\/p>\n
I had become bored with standard designs. Now that I had the whole quality and design thing under control, I set out to also have the whole family portrait thing under control. Yes – my family photos tend to be your garden variety snapshot (albeit with a real camera and usually without me in them).<\/p>\n
The problem is that our special needs son, Christian, has been losing the ability to walk for several months and doesn’t travel well. I really wanted to include him, but the summer was crazy and by fall it got really difficult to get him outside so we couldn’t do a true location portrait, which is my first love. So I settled for the living room. I even ordered a specially mounted photo of Matthew for the kids to hold. We tried on two different days.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I would call this an epic fail. Day two was so bad I won’t even show those. I reverted to my usual go-to candid, semi-bad portraits with Christian and Matthew added via collage.<\/p>\n