Christmas photos at The Little White Studio: keeping Christmas simple this year
Christmas sessions are officially open. 🎄
And this year, I've kept things deliberately simple.
Not nothing-Christmassy-about-it simple. There are Christmas trees. There are fairy lights. There are little wooden decorations. I have absolutely not managed to resist Christmas altogether.
But when I was putting this year's Christmas set together, I kept coming back to one thing:
These are still photographs of your family.
I want them to feel like Christmas when you send them to the grandparents in December, but I also want you to still love them when you find them again in five or ten years.
So rather than building a huge themed set, this year's Christmas studio is very much The Little White Studio with Christmas tucked into it.
Light. Simple. Warm. A little Scandinavian.
The pale studio and natural light keep everything soft, while the Christmas trees and layers of tiny warm fairy lights give me that lovely depth and blurry bokeh in the background.
It's festive, but the Christmas set isn't supposed to be the most interesting thing in the photograph.
You are.
There are a few different ways to do Christmas here this year
This is probably the biggest change.
Not every family wants the same thing from Christmas photos.
Sometimes you really do just want one lovely photograph of the kids.
Sometimes you've realised you haven't had a photograph with them yourself in approximately 84 years.
Sometimes it's time for an updated family portrait.
And sometimes, if everyone has put on actual clothes and made it to the studio at the same time, you quite reasonably want to make the most of it. 😂
So this year there are a few ways to do Christmas, across both The Little White Studio and Little Portrait Club.
Christmas at Little Portrait Club
If you're already part of Little Portrait Club, Christmas can simply become another little chapter in the collection.
The Christmas set works for individual portraits, siblings, parent + child and family portraits.
And this year there's a little more flexibility built in too. You don't necessarily have to choose just one.
Within your usual flexible arrival window, we can photograph more than one thing while everyone is still happily participating. That might mean the children individually and together, a family photograph plus the kids, or finally getting yourself into one too.
For very young children, or kids whose enthusiasm for photography has a fairly short expiry date, I'd usually recommend choosing no more than two. Older children may happily manage a little more.
The aim isn't to cram as many photographs as physically possible into the visit.
It's to get the ones that matter before somebody decides they're done.
Explore Little Portrait Club Christmas →
Christmas at The Little White Studio
Christmas at LWS has a slightly different feel.
The studio is built around beautiful natural light, and that's very much part of the look of these sessions too. I shoot them a little more creatively, using the depth of the Christmas set, the soft light and all those tiny fairy lights disappearing into that lovely blurry bokeh in the background.
There might be quiet portraits, movement, little details, children playing, everyone piled together, or something I spot in the moment that wasn't planned at all.
It's still simple. Still light. Still very Little White Studio.
But there's a little more room to make photographs, rather than simply work through a list of them.
And depending on how much of that you'd like, there are two ways to do it.
A Christmas Chapter
A Christmas Chapter is the short and simple option.
It's a 10-minute session for $180, with 4 digital images included, focused on the one thing you'd most love photographed.
That could be your little person on their own, the siblings together, you with them, or one beautiful family portrait.
They're especially good when you already know exactly what you want and don't need to turn it into a whole photoshoot.
Come in. Get the photograph. Escape while everyone still likes me. 😂
Or make it a Christmas Story
A Christmas Story gives us 20 minutes together for $239, with 6 digital images included.
The difference isn't that Stories are "for families" and Chapters are "for children".
It's simply more room.
More room for a few different groupings. More room for variety. More room for a child who takes a little while to warm up. And more room for me to play with the light, movement and little in-between photographs that tend to happen once everyone settles in.
You might want the whole family together as well as photographs of the children. Siblings together and individually. A parent + child portrait as well as your family photograph.
Or perhaps you just know your family will enjoy the whole thing more if nobody feels hurried.
That's what the extra time is for.
So which one should you choose?
The easiest way to think about it is probably this:
If you want the Little Portrait Club experience, with quick regular portraits and another little chapter in the collection you're building as they grow, choose LPC Christmas.
If you want one simple, focused Christmas update, choose a Christmas Chapter.
And if you'd love more variety or simply a little more breathing room, choose a Christmas Story.
There isn't a "best" one. They're just different ways of getting the photographs you actually want.
Just enough Christmas
I think that's probably the theme of the whole thing this year.
Just enough Christmas.
Enough that the photographs feel special for this little bit of the year.
Enough fairy lights that Christmas definitely gets a look in.
But not so much Christmas that your family disappears underneath it.
Because these aren't just photos for this Christmas.
They're still your family photographs. And I want you to love them long after the decorations have gone back in the cupboard.
Christmas bookings for The Little White Studio and Little Portrait Club are now open.
If it's time to document this chapter of your family's story, I'd love to help.