Every December, the Same Photo: Confessions From 27 Years of Holiday Family Portraits
[IMAGE 1 — joyful family outdoors, golden light]
Every year, right around now, the same email starts landing in my inbox. Different names, same sentence: “We need family photos for our holiday cards. Is it too late?”
It is October 21. It is not too late. But it is the moment the whole city starts performing the same ritual, and after 27 years of photographing it, I have some confessions about the holiday family portrait.
The holiday card is Los Angeles’ most honest tradition
Forget the red carpets. The real annual performance in this city is the family Christmas card, mailed by people who spend December in 70-degree weather. Matching pajamas on a beach in Manhattan Beach. A golden retriever in a reindeer headband. Everyone barefoot in the sand pretending it is a winter wonderland.
I love it. I mean that. There is something deeply human about a city that refuses to let the absence of snow stop the fantasy. The card is not about the season. It is about saying: we are still here, we are still us, the kids are bigger, the dog is older, and we made it another year.
What I have learned watching families perform happiness
Here is the thing nobody admits about the holiday portrait session: the first twenty minutes are theater. Everyone is trying to look like the family they think they are supposed to be. The kids are on their best behavior because they have been threatened within an inch of their lives. The parents are smiling with the particular intensity of people who paid good money for this.
Then something shifts. A kid does something ridiculous. Someone laughs for real. The dog runs off. And that is when the actual family shows up in the frame.
The photos that last, the ones that end up framed and kept, are almost never the perfect posed one. They are the in-between frames. The laugh that broke the pose. The toddler mid-sprint. The parents looking at each other like, can you believe this worked.
I have delivered thousands of holiday galleries. The images families reorder, reprint, and cry over years later are the candid ones. Every time.
[IMAGE 2 — parents with their smiling baby boy, stylish outfits]
The matching-outfit industrial complex
Can we talk about the matching outfits? The coordinated cream-and-denim, the identical plaid pajamas, the color palette planned like a military operation.
I have opinions, and I will keep them gentle: coordination beats matching. A family in the same three colors looks effortless. A family in the exact same outfit looks like a uniform. The best-dressed holiday portraits I have shot are the ones where everyone looks like themselves, just slightly more polished, in colors that sit well together.
Also: lay it all out on the bed the night before and take a phone photo. If it looks good small, it will look good big. This is free advice and it will save your session.
The November panic is real, and it is avoidable
Here is the confession that matters most: every year, families call me the week of Thanksgiving asking for holiday photos, and every year I have to tell them the calendar is gone. The good photographers in this city fill October and November by mid-October. December is a fantasy.
The mini session exists for exactly this reason. Thirty minutes, one location, a tight gallery, done. It is the most efficient transaction in family photography. But minis book out too, because every family in Los Angeles has the same idea at the same time.
If you are reading this in late October and you want cards this year: book this week. Not next week. This week. Call the photographer, ask about mini sessions, and ask when the gallery will be back. Then order your cards the day the gallery lands, because print labs get slammed in December and rush shipping on cards is the most avoidable expense in this whole ritual.
The pressure is the enemy of the photo
Social media turned the holiday card into a competition, and I watch it happen in real time. Parents arrive at the session already stressed about how the photo will look next to everyone else’s. The kids feel it. The session feels it. The photos feel it.
The families who get the best holiday portraits are the ones who show up with low expectations and a sense of humor. They let the toddler be a toddler. They laugh when the dog photobombs. They trust the photographer instead of art-directing from behind the camera.
Perfection is forgettable. The card everyone remembers is the one with the real laugh in it.
[IMAGE 3 — cheerful family outdoors in lush greenery]
The one photo worth taking
After 27 years, here is what I actually believe about the holiday family portrait: it is the most important photo most families take all year, and it has nothing to do with the holidays.
It is the annual record. The kids at this age, exactly this age, never again. The grandparents who might not be in next year’s card. The dog. The house. The version of your family that exists right now and will never exist again in quite this configuration.
That is why the session matters more than the card. The card gets mailed and recycled. The gallery stays. Twenty years from now, nobody will remember what the card looked like. They will remember the photo of everyone laughing, the one where you all look like yourselves.
Book the session. Wear the coordinated outfits. Let the kid be weird. And when the photographer catches the real laugh, that is the one. Frame that one.
For the practical side, hiring a family photographer takes more vetting than most people expect. I wrote the full guide on how to hire the best family photographer in Los Angeles, from pricing to the questions that reveal everything. Senior portraits are a different session with their own playbook, and if you have ever wondered what goes into the million-dollar mitzvah, that is a whole other December tradition.
