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The Key to Christmas Photo Success

My husband uses duct tape (or as my daughters put it, duck tape) to fix everything in his life.

I use toilet paper.

I've had a heck of a time with photos for most of my parent-hood -- especially in the winter. It's dark(ish) here at Christmas-time. The days are short, the sun doesn't come up until it's almost nap time and it goes down well before bed time. Even when it is light outside, it's a grey sort of light that doesn't provide enough illumination for indoor photos (and when it's -30 outside, we don't have all that many outdoor photos!). So taking Christmas photos requires a flash 99.9% of the time.

I just bought myself a huge scrapbooking kit for Christmas (and then asked for "donations" from family members *grin*). The biggest part of a successful scrapbook, however, is good photos and as I've said, I have a shortage of those.

My photos always seem to have red eyes (even if I use a red-eye reduction flash) and the kids always seem to have washed out faces while the background (not hit by the flash) has a dark, cave like look to it.

I was leafing through my most recent copy of the FamilyFun magazine and found an article about taking good photos. Most of it I knew already or I didn't seem to have a problem with (my kids are always smiling in their pictures). But there was a section about flash problems!

They suggested you tape a piece of tissue (even the bathroom kind) over the flash. Now that's MY kind of solution!

The result? I'll let you decide! (Keep in mind that I make my digital camera photos a bit less crisp than regular ones, so it doesn't take you eons to load them on your computer)


photo with flash and no toilet paper	photo with a layer of toilet paper taped over the flash

I love the fact that the wreath is still lit up in the second photo, but it doesn't have that "glare" washing out the colors. This will definitely help me out when I'm taking photos of craft projects, and I'm hoping my Christmas pictures will turn out better!

Just to give you a feel for what a flash free photo of the same wreath would have looked like...

I'll admit, it's a nice festive red color, but likely not what you'd want to see in your scrapbook. This was taken at noon, near an uncurtained window. How I envy those with Floridian sunlight *sigh*

I couldn't find the most recent article on their website, but they did have another one about taking Holiday photos that you can read through if you want more of their tips.

Toilet paper rules!

The Key to Christmas Photo Success

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