How to take great family photos this holiday season

But unless you’re a seasoned photographer, capturing just the right photo can feel pretty daunting. Don’t worry: The Help Desk is here for you. From our nerd family to yours, here’s a quick guide to help you figure out how to prepare for, capture, edit and share a group photo you can feel proud of.

First things first: You have to figure out who’s actually taking the photo.

Lots of families choose to have professional photographers take their holiday portraits and for good reason. At best, they have lots of experience making their subjects comfortable — including fussy kids. And at worst, well, at least you’re not doing all this yourself.

If this is something you’re considering, here’s what to do:

• Tap your friends, family and colleagues for names they recommend, then check out their online portfolios and Instagrams to get a sense of their style and approach. If they don’t have suggestions, sites such as Photographer.org, Thumbtack and Snappr can help you find — and vet — photographers in your area.
• Once you’ve found someone you like, work out a budget. (We checked the rates for photographers in multiple states, and basic family shoots often run between $300 and $500.) Be sure to check about how long sessions run, how many edited photos you’ll get at the end and print rights — which allow you to print and share those photos personally.
• Book them ASAP. That’s one more gig this professional can bank on and one less thing hanging over your head.

There’s a lot to be said for doing it yourself, though. Few things are as rewarding to look at as a nice family photo you captured. Keep these things in mind before you get everyone together.

Camera placement: Whether you’re using a smartphone or a more traditional camera, you’ll want something to prop it up on.

This could be as simple as a tall chair or a counter top, but a tripod would be ideal. We used Peak Design’s travel tripod to help capture our images, but you don’t need anything fancy — just something that won’t wobble and can be made tall enough to sit at or above your family’s eye line. (If there’s someone who looks good photographed from below, I haven’t met them.)

Your “set”: Will your kids all be dressed like elves? Are you aiming for a rustic vibe? Style is a very personal thing, so we’ll leave the look up to you — just make sure wherever you set up is tidy and offers plenty of light to work with.

Also, remember that different times of day offer different qualities of light: Midday light is the strongest, so if you’re taking photos indoors near a window, considering hanging up a sheer curtain (if you don’t already have one) to take the edge off. Meanwhile, light later in the day is warmer and moodier, which isn’t to everyone’s taste.

Unless you’re experienced enough to have your own set of lights, consider asking one of your would-be subjects to sit in your “set” at different times of day to see what look suits your vision best.

Now it’s time to actually take some photos. This part may seem the most stressful — and sometimes, it can be — but keep these pointers in mind, and you should have some eye-catching results on the other side.

Your framing is part of the message: Zooming in tight around your family’s faces can feel cozy and intimate, especially with some little kids in the mix. But if you’re more keen to capture how your family has grown, say, in quantity or height, you’ll want a wider framing that shows full bodies.

If you have the time, play with multiple perspectives to see what they “say” about your people.

Use remote capture tools: You could always set a timer and run back into frame to join your family, but that’s a little passé. Instead, digital cameras from Sony, Fuji, Canon, Nikon and more have companion smartphone apps that allow you to trigger the shutter from where you’re posing.

Samsung Galaxy and Google Pixel phones come with features that start a countdown and take a photo when they see an open palm in the frame. And if you’re using an iPhone and you have an Apple Watch, you can discreetly snap photos by tapping your watch’s screen to start a timer.

Take lots of photos: In my life, I’ve only ever regretting taking fewer photos, not more of them. And with multiple people in a photo, they’re not always going to be doing exactly what you want, when you want. It’s better to take too many now than to review things later and wish you’d captured more.

Don’t fret over “perfect”: Give yourself a little latitude to embrace the photos that didn’t turn out exactly the way you’d hoped. Sometimes, it’s the little candid moments with the people around you that make a photo great, not practiced poses and visionary rigor.

Editing, sharing and printing

Whew! The hard part is over; now, all that’s left is to find your favorite photos and give them a little extra polish with edits.

If you wound up taking your photos with a smartphone, you don’t need to look far for solid editing tools — iPhones and Android devices will let you adjust exposure, tweak contrast, dial in colors and sharpen or soften images from inside their default Photos or Gallery apps.

In fact, these basic tools are so handy and straightforward that you may want to consider using a smartphone to edit photos you didn’t take with it. (Unless it’s ancient, your digital camera almost certainly has an app for wirelessly transferring photos.)

There’s a lot we could say about how we would edit certain photos, but it all really boils down to your taste. Play with all the tools in your editing app of choice, get a feel for how they affect your photos, and tweak those pics to satisfy you.

For more nuanced controls on phones and computers — plus new AI features to reduce noise and selectively edit parts of photos — we’d recommend Adobe’s Lightroom ($9.99/month). If you’re feeling a little more adventurous (and don’t mind paying a little extra) Adobe’s Photoshop includes even stranger AI tools to tweak your photos, including a “generative fill” option that lets you create outlandish backgrounds for your family to inhabit.

Not every AI editing tool will cost you, either. Google’s Pixel 8 phones come with a Best Take feature that lets you stitch together one photo with smiling faces pulled from different takes. (Don’t worry: None of those faces are AI-generated.) We’ve found in our testing that it’s pretty hit-or-miss, but when it works well, the results can be impressive.

This tool isn’t for everyone, at least in part because some people worry that it celebrates moments that didn’t really occur. That’s a fair point, but photos like these can be kind of a performance anyway. Our advice? If you like the AI’s results, don’t feel bad about what it took to get there.

As for sharing the fruits of your labor, you’ve probably already thought about posting them on Facebook and Instagram — but you have other options.

If you were planning to email copies of these photos to loved ones, be careful — your email provider may balk if you try to send multiple high-quality images. Instead, consider putting them in shared albums in Google Photos or Apple Photos, and share links to those with a nice message instead.

And for folks who prefer getting those photos in the mail — like me! — there’s no shortage of easy ways to turn pictures into post-ready cards. CVS and Staples are among the fastest, and you can often pick up your results the same day. If you have more time and don’t mind spending a little more, Adorama’s Printique service and Nations Photo Lab come highly recommended from the photographers we spoke to.