Anatomy of a Christmas photo

The middle of December always seems to pop up without warning around here. I think it's because the first week or so of every month is pretty busy for me, with newspaper print dates, and Jen is usually pretty busy in early December getting ready for her class performances. Last year, with Jen's pregnancy and general baby prep going on, we skipped sending cards and letters out altogether - but it's fun to hear what's going on in our friends' lives, and we don't want to get dropped from too many Christmas lists, so I decided to whip together a Christmas letter this year.

We like getting Christmas photos, so we try to send one ourselves. This year, we budgeted ourselves about half an hour to run 5 blocks south of our house to the foothills to take a quick photo with the tripod and the timer. Fortunately, the blinking light caught Cami's attention enough that she mostly looked at the camera with us. The time of day wasn't great, and the sun was bright - but no big whoop; it's just a Christmas photo, right?



So we snapped around 20 photos, because I figured I'd want to do a bit of Frankenstein-style hacking. Graphic artists can never leave well enough alone. The photo we decided to use as the basis (above left) had Jen standing on a small lump of soil, and my glasses were all reflections (above right) - but the basic idea was okay. Cami didn't look too thrilled to be there - in fact, it was a little chilly, so she probably wasn't terribly happy. Out of all the shots, she only smiled in one (below left) - which, unfortunately, was taken from an opposite angle, so the sun hits her face from the opposite side that it hits our faces. Nevertheless, I used that face, and also found some of my eyes from another shot that also was taken from the other angle, getting rid of the glare (below right).



So in the final shot, Cami has a new face, I have new eyes, Jen requested I prop myself up about 4 inches so she doesn't look too tall, and I took out the power lines on the hills behind us while I was at it. Also brightened up the shadows on everyone's faces a little bit.



The only last thing Jen didn't love was the way she was standing - so I just put a largish "Merry Christmas" message over the bottom part of the photo. Pumped up some of the greens in the grasses (it was pretty dead out there) - and voila! The 2007 Baham Christmas photo.