I love getting Christmas Cards in the mail. The most welcome ones are the photo Holiday cards I receive from family and friends. My cousin lives near the beach and each year she searches for a holiday card that shows a beach scene. Most years she has no luck finding one. The traditional cards with their snowy winter scenes, while memorable, just don’t capture her idea of beautiful holiday scenery.

Once she got into digital photography, she was able to take incredible pictures of her beloved beach year round. Being a creative individual, one day she brought along a Santa hat, a red and green striped beach towel, and some candy canes. She staged a holiday scene with the hat on the back corner of her beach chair and the towel draped over the arm and onto the sand with a few candy canes placed on it.

Last week she sent me a preview of this year’s Christmas card. Her entirely unique photo Christmas card for 2008 shows the back of Santa’s beach chair sitting in the shade of a palm tree, looking out across the sunlit sand to the turquoise ocean where he seems to have gone for a swim. How delightful…and how “her.”

So, while I’m freezing this December putting up my outdoor Christmas lights, I’ll have a clear picture of how my cousin is toughing it out on a balmy beach. She always did make me smile.

I recently attended a friend’s wedding in Ohio this past summer. Before leaving for the wedding, my little sister (who loves taking pictures) stopped by to lend me her digital camera. She told me to take lots of pictures because she wanted to see what all the girls’ dresses looked like. And since I am not that great with a camera, my sister took a few minutes to pass along some of our family photo tips. These photo tips included:

1. Be Discrete: Try not to stick out like a sore thumb while taking pictures. This might make people feel uncomfortable and lead to unnatural poses.
2. Don’t Be Afraid: If you want to take someone’s picture, don’t be afraid to ask.
3. Take Proper Pictures. Do not take any embarrassing pictures of the people hosting the party. A good rule of thumb: don’t take the picture if you wouldn’t feel comfortable sending it as your own photo holiday cards.

So I took my sister’s digital camera and family photo tips to Ohio. I had a great time at the wedding and the digital photos turned out even better. When developing the pictures I decided to make two sets…one for me (and my nosey sister) and another for the bride and groom.

A few weeks later I got a phone call from my friend who got married. He said that they loved the pictures I sent and felt that some of my shots turned out better than the professional photographer’s. In fact, they decided to use one of my digital photos for their photo holiday cards. I immediately thought of my sister’s photo tips and gave her a call. It felt good that I made my friends happy with the pictures, but my sister was even happier that her older brother actually listened to her advice.

“Say CHEESE!”

And with this one utterance, the frenzy to create holiday photo cards begins. Year after year, people will start the holiday card photo shoot earlier and earlier. “Kids! Get out of your bathing suits and put on these hot and sticky velvet outfits so we can take pictures in front of our artistically decorated artificial tree.” The kids aren’t the only ones who get in on the action. If you’re anything like me, you enjoy taking photos of your pets in addition to photographing people. Wouldn’t a picture of my five kitty cats make wonderful holiday photo cards? What’s not to like about sweet, furry kitties?

Sending photo holiday cards is also a growing trend among businesses. While coordinating holiday photo cards for a company may sound a little daunting, it really isn’t. The hardest part will be gathering all of your employees together at the same time, but if you give them enough notice, it’s not impossible. The most common business holiday photo cards I see are photos of all the employees grouped outside on a clear day. Click, click, and you’re done. While some companies will get a little more festive with Santa hats or antlers, it’s really a matter of personal taste.

Whether you’re creating holiday photo cards for business or personal use, once the photo is taken the rest is a piece of cake. You can insert your printed picture into photo holder cards or you can go the more electronic way and upload your digital photo to have printed directly onto your holiday photo cards. What could be easier?

I love taking photos for my photo holiday cards, but the problem is getting the photos developed! I’m not quite up to speed with digital cameras, so I haven’t yet taken advantage of the instant gratification that digital photos can give you. Recently I took four disposable cameras that had been sitting on my dresser for several years to be developed, not really knowing what was on them. Were they vacation photos? Holiday photos? Photos of my cats? Who knows! I did not take the disposable cameras all at once though, as that would not be like me. I took one at a time and each time I picked up the one set of pictures, I would drop off another one to be developed. It turns out that any normal person probably would have been anxious to get at least one set of photos back quickly; they were my son’s wedding photos from September of 2006!

Actually, after getting the photos developed, I was very happy I did. Two rolls were from Christmas 2006 and 2007 at my son’s new home, with both sides of the new families in attendance. My daughter-in-law was very nervous having everyone over for the first time in their new marriage. The get-together was such a great success that we decided to do it again in 2007. I had promised to send her duplicate photos of both holidays, which I eventually did. I was better off not sending them to her at all though because she had forgotten my promise. When I finally sent her the belated Christmas photos, I got in trouble with her for not sending them sooner (not as much trouble as I got into for forgetting their first anniversary, but that is another story)!

The fourth roll contained photos of a fostered cat that I had to give up to an animal hospice due to serious illnesses. She died soon after I left her there. I was so happy when I realized I had those pictures of my lost friend Callie. I will never forget her and the photos are a special reminder of her.

Have I learned my lesson about developing photos belatedly? Yes, I treasure them even more once I get them developed, no matter how late, because they are fond memories of the past that were not quite vividly remembered until the photos were viewed. And when I go to my friend’s son’s pre-school graduation this May, I probably won’t get those photos developed until he goes to high school so she and I can have a good cry over how cute he was back then!

Here’s a little story of how my photo holiday cards from last year came to be from a vacation I recently took in Italy…

It seems like just yesterday that my family and I traveled to beautiful Italy to celebrate my parent’s 50th wedding anniversary. Up until that time I was not what anyone would call a picture taker; I always left the photography to others.  However, I realized that I may never have another chance to visit Rome, Venice, or my Grandparents home town so I needed to make sure I had a camera to memorialize the wonderful memories we were going to make.

We started our vacation off snapping pictures of the eight of us dining in a vineyard just outside of Rome.  Our journey took us from one amazing photographic place to the next – from Florence and the “David” to Pisa’s Leaning Tower to our hotel built into the side of a mountain in Assisi to canals of Venice.  I have the most amazing photos of us visiting my Dad’s cousins in Positano (he hadn’t seen them in over 30 years).  And, our cousins owned a hotel that was famous (scenes from “Under the Tuscan Sun” were shot there), so we were anxious to take pictures not only of the family we hadn’t seen but of the famous balcony from the movie and the original frescoes in the hotel.  That first Christmas after our trip I decided to use that amazing picture from Positano as my photo Holiday cards so everyone could once again enjoy our once in a lifetime vacation in Italy.

Digital cameras are a wonderful thing. Picture the stack of Christmas photo cards you receive each year. Ever stop to wonder how long it took to get the shot that wound up on your best friend’s photo card? The kids are perfectly posed, looking at the camera, smiling brightly. The only question is whether it took 50 or 100 tries. It’s an open secret…photographing people presents its challenges!

When I was a kid, there were no digital cameras. My family didn’t even have a 35mm camera; It was Polaroid all the way. I can still remember the flash sticks and shaking out each print so it would develop faster. A look through our family photo album shows lots of photos that could’ve been better, but somehow, I don’t think it was cost-effective to try and try again. This would explain why there are family photos of me, at age three, baring all of my teeth in a horrific grin, eyes squinted closed, trying my best to follow directions when my mom or dad said “Smile!” There is an old saying that each time someone takes your picture, they steal a piece of your soul. I wonder what pieces were stolen with photos like that!

Photographing people, be it toddlers, teens, or your grandparents, is a lot easier without having to worry about wasting film. Well, maybe “easier” isn’t the right word. The more people you put into your photo, the harder it gets. One person is smiling; the other is talking. Your mother is looking at some other person with a camera and your brother’s eyes are closed. Your wallet isn’t being hurt by wasted film anymore, but your patience may take a hit.

When taking pictures, breathe deep, and work for that shot. It will come. Those photo holiday cards you got in the mail last winter are proof. And, in this age of computers and online photo albums, the bloopers can be stored for all eternity, too!