Capturing Christmas beyond Childhood | by Abi Coop
For many of us our photography journey isn’t about childhood photography, or it has naturally evolved past capturing the magic of children of at Christmas. Perhaps our children are grown and no longer live with us, or even if they do, they no longer tolerate our cameras documenting every moment of their lives. For others, child photography was never our chosen genre and yet we still want to create during this fun and festive season. In the blog, I’m going to talk about lots of alternative ways we can still fill our creative cups over Christmas, and explore some of the beautiful subjects we can shoot besides children.
Lights
Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without an abundance of lights - candles, fairy lights, lanterns, fireworks, bonfires, and more. These provide endless opportunities for photography, with the light itself as the primary subject. Lights pair beautifully with creative techniques; intentional camera movement, freelensing, multiple exposures, shooting through things, creative apertures for bokeh or starbursts…, each adding a touch of wonder and infusing extra magic into your images to capture the sparkle of the season.
Food and Drink
Another key component of any festive celebration is all the food and drink involved. Capturing this can mean anything from documenting the preparation process, to setting up elaborate flat-lays of the finished dishes. Food photography is also a beautiful way to incorporate traditions unique to your own family, with your images evoking warm feelings of nostalgia. Perhaps you have a favourite recipe, passed down from your Grandma, that you bake every December. Use textures and colours intentionally to tell a rich, inviting story that makes your viewer’s mouth water!
Details at Home
It’s all the extra little details that help make Christmas special - a precious ornament that always takes pride of place on your mantelpiece, a carefully hung bauble on the tree, a curled ribbon adding the finishing touch to a wrapped gift. Capturing these minutiae not only produces some gorgeous imagery, but creates a record for you to look back on in years to come to remember these treasured details.
Out and About
Wrap up warm, head outside and you’ll find inspiration waiting wherever you go. City streets and shopping malls are illuminated with festive displays. Christmas markets are full of community spirit with warm, bustling stalls, delicious treats and twinkling lights. If you prefer something quieter, nature is putting on its on show of seasonal beauty, often with moods and textures taking centre stage in place of vibrant colours. If you’re lucky enough to have snow, you might be able to capture the intricate details of an individual snowflake, or the stillness of a wider snowy winter wonderland scene.
Family, Pets and Self Portraits
Of course, just because children aren’t available to feature in your images doesn’t mean you can’t include other living subjects. Capturing family members is really important, you’ll never regret having more photos of elderly relatives when they are no longer able to celebrate with you. Get your pets involved too - your dog wearing a Santa hat, your cat curled up underneath the tree, maybe even create a magical composite of your pet inside a snowglobe. Finally, don’t forget about yourself! Set up a tripod and use an interval timer to document Christmas morning or Christmas dinner with yourself in the frame, or get creative with reflective decorations for a festive mirror selfie. Every year, I take a bauble reflection self-portrait, experimenting with a different lens or creative technique and adding overlays to keep each image unique yet connected. Here are the results from the last four years.
Christmas offers so much more to capture than the wonder of childhood. Magical lights, festive food, sparkly details or the beauty of nature, there are endless opportunities for photography throughout this season. Capture whatever it is that makes the time special for you; moments, places, items and people that hold personal significance and tell the story of how you celebrate Christmas. Our creativity doesn’t need to fade, it just needs to evolve. Embrace the freedom and the time to experiment, and rediscover the magic of Christmas through your own artistic eye.
