I am the go-to photographer for my family and friends (as a matter of fact, one of my friends would have no family photos of her children if it weren’t for me), and I had just recently gotten my first really good camera. My reason for buying this camera was to take a good family photo…using the automatic timer so that I could be in it.

I have taken a lot of pictures of my dog, generally more than she would have liked and occasionally with her in some sort of outfit…or posed with household objects. There is one of her “reading” The Night before Christmas that I should have used for my Christmas photo cards! But she wasn’t in my plans for this particular family photo.

It was Christmas day, and while I had played with my camera quite a bit…the moment had arrived for it to serve the purpose for which it was bought. I gently broke the news to my father and aunt that we were going to take just ONE more picture. I asked them to both sit on the couch and started to set up the camera so that the picture would be correctly framed. I set the automatic timer as a rehearsal to make sure it worked before I hurried into the picture. And then…the moment arrived. I set the timer again and made a mad dash to the couch to sit between my dad and aunt, and ever so slowly, Molly got up from where she had been sleeping and ambled over to the couch. She looked at us, and turned around to face the camera, and then sat. There were still a few seconds before the timer went off, but still she sat…and stayed. The picture snapped, and then she went back to the sunny spot on the rug where she had been sleeping and the three of us all looked at each other and asked if that had really happened.

The picture was perfect. If we had tried to get Molly in the picture, we couldn’t have gotten her to look at the camera at the right time, and she probably would have been moving. But since she decided she wanted to be in it, she posed perfectly. It is the best family photo that I have because of the story that went with it. And the next year, when my family and friends received my holiday photo cards, they loved the story as well!

In my opinion, digital cameras trump most other technology as one of the best inventions in a long time, though I do really love my DVR. I enjoy taking family photos and viewing them either on the TV, computer or Nintendo Wii system which is also very cool! My children love to make puzzles out of the photos and put the puzzle pieces together. What I don’t enjoy so much, however, is trying to take that perfect family photo to use on my Christmas photo cards.

Like many other moms out there, I too went through the hardship of going through all the necessary motions to create perfect family photos that I could use for our photo cards. If you think hardship is too strong a word consider this – first you have to find the outfits (for each child mind you). Then you need to make sure that haircuts, bathing and other necessary grooming has taken place when donning the outfits that were selected. Then you have to pick your photo shoot location and if you’re like me, you picked several locations so that you would have options because who doesn’t like options? At that point, if you can get your children to cooperate, you can start snapping some family photos. If you are like me, it can take at least 100 photos before you can get something that you can work with. Thank goodness for the invention of digital cameras! Oh yeah, I already said that. Anyway, then comes what I call the dwindling down process of ten lovely finalists that will compete in the swimsuit competition, err, I mean compete to be the photo that is ultimately used for our Christmas photo cards.

All of these steps do usually result in a nice photo but then I read the book Confessions of a Slacker Mom and decided to stop being super perfect-picture-person and cut myself a break. It finally dawned on me that I have taken some excellent, spontaneous family photos throughout the years. Oftentimes, they are even better than those that have been posed for. So now when it comes time to pick the family photo for our digital photo cards at Christmas time or for birthday invitations or thank you notes, I just pick my favorite from ones I’ve already taken and then go spend the time I actually saved by playing with my kids!

What does reaching an age of reason have to do with taking photos of your kids for photo Christmas cards? Well, when your children are very young, you can jolly them and then maybe bribe them to sit still and smile. Once they are old enough to understand and believe your threats, you can blackmail them into looking their best.

Keep in mind that you have to first lay your groundwork by building up your “rep” as an adult who does not make idle threats. So, do not bandy about parental threatening phrases unless you are committed to carrying through.

You also have to give some thought to your threats so you can craft them to suit the specific child. For example, somewhere during the “tween” and teen years, many youngsters go through a sullen phase. Getting this child to show up for the family holiday photo is near to impossible and getting them to smile is usually too much to hope for.

A good threat for your daughter may be, “If we can’t get a decent, smiling photo of you, I’m going to use that baby picture of you in the saggy diaper!” Be aware, however, that this threat may leave your male child totally unmoved. For that child, you may need to threaten to personally and thoroughly clean out his bedroom and throw out all of his much-loved “junk.”

Have a bit of faith in your parental wiliness and hang on to your patience until that wonderful age when they stride off to college, confident that they already know more than their parents. They will become condescendingly sweet to the old folks for a while and you can snag some fabulous digital photo cards to one day show your grandchildren, with whom you will snicker over their parents’ weird hair styles, poses, and clothing choices!

Stop it! Stop it right now and let’s get creative! No more lining people up like glazed-over mannequins for the annual group photo! Life is beautiful and so is your family, your friends, and even your coworkers. With a little forethought and a few simple steps you too can bring forth award-winning digital photo holiday cards without running to the local portrait studio. Here are a few ideas to get you going:

• - The number one trick to taking good photos is to take lots of them. You delete or discard the unusable ones and are left with only the spectacular. Digital cameras make this very easy to do.

• - The second technique is to find refreshing locations, even if it is in your own backyard. Parks, golf courses, churchyards, beaches, and gardens all offer lovely settings with natural light. Seat everyone on a sand dune or on an outcrop of rocks. Have some standing, some seated; variety can come together into the perfect shot of a warm family gathering.

• - A third technique is to match apparel or manner of dress for your family photos. Have each person wear casual white shirts and blue jeans, for example. Shoot a few pictures with everyone barefoot. And it is not necessary to have everyone look directly into the camera. Some or all participants can look off into the distance or other direction for a more thoughtful pose.

• - Finally, think of several scene settings in advance; be the director and put them to work. Sometimes it takes careful planning to come up with that natural and spontaneous shot, but if you work your plan you will be absolutely delighted with the outcome!

Has anyone else gone through the experience of a family wedding?

When my son Sean starting dating Kim, I thought to myself, “She seems like a nice girl.” But with my son’s dating history, I really didn’t think the relationship would last. But last it did! I think my first clue was when Sean wanted Kim to be included in the family holiday photo cards. Then we had to take digital pictures of them on Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, etc. You get the idea.

Finally, after a year of dating, Sean popped the question on a horse and buggy ride through Central Park. This experience, along with all of the holiday photos, have been captured in digital photos that will last a lifetime. The photo collection is sure to continue growing as time goes on.

Now we are in the process of hiring a wedding photographer and I can’t believe how much photography has evolved since my wedding. Not only have the wedding photographers gone totally digital, but now the whole process isn’t complete without a videographer capturing everything on a DVD.

I know it sounds like we’re flash happy, but years from now we’ll look at all of the family photos fondly, enjoying memories of when we were all a little younger and slimmer.

For the past couple of years, my wife Susan has really been into the studying and tracing of her family history. Genealogical research is a complex process that involves more than affixing a collection of names on a pedigree chart. Genealogy involves identifying ancestral or descendant families by using historical records to establish biological, genetic, or familial kinship. Oftentimes, Susan spends entire afternoons and evenings on the computer doing her research.

One of the ways I have been able to help her is by going through old family photos and Christmas photo cards that she has collected over the years and scanning them into the computer. Some of the old photos are perfectly clear and don’t need any digital restoration at all. However, quite a few of the antique photos have lost a little bit of their sharpness or need to have marks or obvious cracks removed.

This is where programs such as Microsoft Picture It (which is installed for free on some computers) or Adobe Photoshop come in handy. Not only can old photos be cleaned up, but other editing features can also improve these older photos. The old photos can be resized or cropped, the brightness and contrast changed, or in the case of color photos, the color balance restored and red-eye removed. Once these procedures are used, new, digital files of the photos can not only be saved onto a hard drive or disc (CD or DVD), but the photos can be printed out, framed, and hung on a wall for all to see. It’s priceless to now have the ability to create digital photos of old family photos taken before this technology was in place.

For Susan, digitally restoring and preserving these family photos of long-gone relatives has brought her many hours of joy and happy tears.

Every family has one – a mother, cousin, grandparent or aunt who obsessively shoves the camera in everyone’s face at family functions.  This special family photographer is always around for opportunities for family photos, no matter how unflattering they may be. You can run, but you can never hide from the unforgiving lens.

As a child, my grandmother was the biggest offender, taking pictures of me “eating” chocolate cake, watching television, or running around in a diaper. Then, of course, I hated the thought of being photographed at such inopportune moments.  Now, as I look at the albums upon albums of all those fleeting moments, I have to say that I am sort of glad that my grandmother was as aggressive as the Hollywood paparazzi when I was young.

My family went to a backyard barbecue at my aunt’s house never expecting that we would walk away with one of the best family photos we had ever taken together.  The four of us were sitting around with our burgers when grandma came around with the camera.  She snapped a perfect shot…my sister had a mouthful of burger, my mother was mid-conversation with my father who was obviously not listening, and I happened to see the camera and winked.  A perfect candid photo! When grandma emailed it to us (yes, she does that, too), we all got a good laugh out of it and decided to share it with everyone else.  We used this ridiculous picture in our Christmas photo cards. I have to say, we got a lot of positive feedback from the recipients of the card…some loved it, some thought it was a mistake and others thought it was posed.  But I had to hand it to my grandma… her persistent camera-clicking was a big hit this year!

Wow! Without even trying, this year I’ve got one of the most excellent family photos for my photo Christmas cards! It started with a Grandparent’s Day gift: tickets for the whole family to go together to the circus – grandparents, parents and children. Getting there included the usual merry-go-round of logistics planning, and teasing about one another’s directional foibles and timing mishaps. We arrived in a little swarm of laughter, with every one of us feeling like a young child on holiday. We started enthusiastically taking pictures of each other: sitting in a row, biting into big puffs of pink cotton candy, digging fists into the popcorn cartons.

Best of all, while we were taking pictures one of my enterprising children enticed a clown to pose with our entire group, while snagging a passerby to take digital photos. The resulting family photos are a treasure of frozen merriment! As soon as I saw the digital photos, I knew we just had to send that particular photo far and near as this year’s photo Christmas cards.  I’m often writing notes in my holiday cards, to distant relatives and old friends, to update them on the growth and well-being of my children and grandchildren.  This year, I’ll let my family photo Christmas cards say it all for me!

So here’s my problem: if taking pictures is getting easier and easier, how come getting the right shot for my photo Christmas cards is such a trial and tribulation? If you’re saying, “Don’t I know it,” then you are probably also aware of how the challenges when taking pictures convolute over the passage of time. The scheduling alone could make you give up on taking photos. Who is available? When? Who first needs a haircut he doesn’t want and who just got a haircut she hates? If one of your teens begs, “Wait ‘til I lose another five pounds,” the other whines, “If we don’t do it now while my face is clear, I don’t want to do it at all!”

You know how it goes when taking family photos – when they are small children, the biggest challenge when taking pictures is patience, both yours and theirs. Getting more than one child at a time to face the camera and smile, without moving and without having a finger stuck in mouth or ear or nose (not necessarily their own), is enough of a miracle. Having them all come out in the photos looking like the adorable angels you know they are, rather than like the little trolls one facial twist can produce, is quite another miracle.

But then they mature and you plan your ideal photo greeting cards – a lovely fireside tableau during your collegian’s Thanksgiving homecoming. And so, just in time for your photo op, your high school teen has a freshly broken arm set in an awkward position and your littlest angel has puffy red eyes and drippy red nose. Guess what? Even if you, eventually some year, do manage to produce a photo greeting card showing “family perfection,” that’s not the family photo you will love best. Oh no, your favorite photo cards will be the ones showing sniffles and clunky casts, bad hair cuts and mischievous, gap-toothed facial expressions. Those are the real keepers!

Have you ever walked into a convenience store and look at one of those photo Christmas cards? You know…the cards where you can place one of your family photos into a slot?  They always seem to have the same happy family posing for the picture.  Traditionally you send these cards with a studio portrait of a family member or your entire family.  Personally, I like to put a little modern spin on the classic idea.

Here are some Christmas photo cards tips to help you get a little more creative this season:

• Ditch the Studio – Those posed shots do look very nice, but they don’t tell a story.  Use a digital camera or a high-res scanner to take candid shots of the person/family.  It’s these small memories we hold on to the tightest.
• Find your “Calling” – Most people don’t carry a camera around at all times, but they carry around cell phones.  Cell phone cameras are becoming a standard feature in phones, and can take high-quality photos.  If the moment strikes you, this is an easy way you can instantly capture it. Now you have a fun picture to share.
• Don’t Forget to De-Digitize – Print out your pictures on high quality photo paper and send them the old fashioned way.  You may be tempted to e-mail them out to friends and family after taking, but e-mailed photos don’t come with that lasting impression.  Think about the smiles they’ll have when they open a beautiful Photo Christmas Card they get in the mail this December.  No matter how high-tech we become, there’s nothing like the feeling of receiving real Christmas cards.