Creating family post cards for Christmas is a tradition followed by many American families. And every year the issue of how or where to sit or stand and what to wear gets urgent when the usual post card is to be created. If you’re working with a professional family photographer, then you are likely to receive essential guidelines for the matter. But what if you would like to take a picture yourself? Where to get some inspiration to create a masterpiece for the 2017 Christmas postcard?
You’ve just found your life saving article. Here with the professional advice of family photographers we will present you 5 easiest and best poses for portraits to ensure that every family member looks great on your card. Read on and try to imagine your own relatives in the places of the models we’ll be talking about.
Best poses for portraits #1 | Classics
Classical pose is one the best poses for portraits. It is always a winning one because it helps you bond the whole family together and set the right tone for your little photo session. Classics is very easy to apply to life because it’s simple for your non-professional models, it’s quick to shoot, and it’s absolutely safe. Safety in this case equals guarantees that everyone in the picture will look great. However, a lot of people find classic poses for portraits boring. Should you start your family photo session with this option, carefully follow your folk’s reaction to it. If they get bored, move on to the next one.
In classical best poses for portraits that are used for Christmas cards you need to put your family into a V-Up or V-Down position; then you need to ensure that the people are in the very center of the picture and that they are equally surrounded by the empty space from all sides. This empty space provides the feeling of unity among the people in the picture which is just what you need for a perfect Christmas postcard.
Best poses for portraits #2 | Hug each other
In most cases this is one of the best poses for portraits applied to small family photos. Yet, professional family photographers say that large families hugging each other also look amazing and very intimate. And isn’t intimacy something that you’re looking for in a photo for a Christmas card? Hugs in the beginning seem to be odd for most families, but after posing in this way for only 5 minutes people tend to melt. Very often relatives begin making fun and hugging everyone around. This kind of behavior helps creating unique warm and truly family pictures to fulfill your primary goal.
Hugging pictures also work perfectly for small families with babies because they highlight presence of a new family member in the picture and are always filled with love.
Best poses for portraits #3 | Add some action
After hugging you can proceed to some more experiments. It’s just the right time to move everyone a little so that your relatives switch places or just make funny faces. When the general mood of the session is elevated, it’s always easier to make a perfect shot for the Christmas post card. But in this case, as a person with a camera, you will have to act very fast! Professional family photographers even advise having a remote control for the camera to ensure that every special moment of your family’s tomfoolery is captured.
Should you have a small family, you can go outside for some truly action photography. One of the best poses for portraits in general is the one where people jump. Such photos show true emotions and openess to the viewer, which is exactly your aim for a Christmas card photo. You can even set some contest for all your folks to make the funniest face or the weirdest pose; you can add some props or let your models choose them without your help. This minor freedom generally leads to amazing and unpredictably fascinating photos!
Best poses for portraits #4 | Tight crops
For this kind of photography you will need professional help of family photographers. Such pictures make perfect post cards but you can’t create them yourself, unless you agree to be absent from the picture. For such pictures you need an expert eye and vision that can create the masterpiece.
This approach to the best poses for portraits is advised for smaller families and not large groups of people. The idea can be explained in terms of unity and some intimacy that can exist only among few people. In this case you won’t have much free space in the picture (as you had in a classic shot); this means that you need to discuss with your photographer the text that you’re willing to put on the photograph to ensure that it fits into the empty space.
Best poses for portraits #5 | A little fun
Very often families are unable to come together for a family photo shooting before the holiday and so they can’t create a perfect post card. But we offer you to be a little more creative. You can replace your relatives with some objects or movie characters, or even LEGO figures! Be original and think of the objects that may represent your folks. Then just set the scene, put these objects and voila! You get a funny, creative, and still amazing post card of the whole family for this Christmas! The main trick here is to ensure that your chosen representations are easy to decode.
