Thoughts on Christmas Cards

Under the Mistletoe, a photo by meagan.porter on Flickr.

My minor obsession with miniatures and making my own holiday cards continued again this year with the next installment of my Christmas Card Photo Shoot.

I received a lot of positive feedback from last year's attempt, mostly about my photos of Oscar el Gato (one of which even won a contest). But more than that, I get a lot of joy throughout the whole endeavor  for a couple reasons.

I strongly believe that sending and receiving mail is a lost art, and it's easily buried under the process of addressing and sending holiday cards the way we modern folk do it. As a kid, I used to help my mom send Christmas cards. I remember feeling an enormous pressure to get all those cards out, plopping down with a bargain pack of 50 cards most likely bought during sales following Christmas the previous year and going through everyone in the address book. Every card had a pre-written message so it was easy enough; "Dear Aunt Somebody and Uncle So-and-So, Merry Christmas, Love, the Porter family." Sometimes I wrote out our names. And sometimes the cards already said, "Merry Christmas," so I didn't always have to write that. But I was an efficient little assembly line of card messaging and addressing, a task that catered perfectly to my love of my own handwriting and my obsessive need to complete lists.

As an adult, undertaking the societal rite of passage in sending my own Christmas cards for the first time, I remember standing in the aisle at Target in early November, unable to settle on the right holiday greetings or even sufficient holiday greetings. For some reason it felt like a big deal; I was frozen in indecision; I couldn't just grab a box and be happy with whatever I got. I can make cards better than this, I thought, nay, I will make cards better than this.

Which leads me to the point I quickly realized as I set about my task: handmade cards don't come with pre-printed messages. When you forgo the 50 pack of bargain cards, it forces you to handwrite the names of your recipients, handwrite a message, and handwrite a closing. It forces you to think, to really think about all the names, all the individuals in your address book, or at least I do while I'm writing. It forces you to actually communicate, to make a connection beyond the act of checking this person's name off a list once per year. I'm not trying sound holier-than-thou. There is nothing wrong with the assembly-line method of messaging and addressing Christmas cards, if that's the way you prefer to go about it each holiday season. But having tried the alternative, our new modern tradition just isn't for me.

In addition, let it not be taken lightly that there is something immeasurably satisfying in taking one large, seemingly insurmountable project and breaking it down into a series of tiny tasks. Plopped down in the middle of my living room, affixing photos with double-sided sticky tape to cardstock folded in half, buffing off fingerprints with a soft cloth, writing messages on the inside, over and over again, one at a time until each is done.

And so, finally, we arrive at what this blog is truly about: the photography. There's something calming about photographing miniatures. I tend to lose myself faster in the work than just about any other project I do, in the process of constructing a set, positioning lights, breathing shallowly as I try to stay as still as possible. Hours pass. I am impatient in almost every single other area of my life but this one, shifting figures fractions of inches, watching where the light falls. Click.

Last year I remember trying to go for a vintage-y Christmas look with the ornaments and didn't concentrate so much on the miniatures. But the miniatures were my favorite photos from last year, so that's what I focused on this year. I didn't try to go for any certain "look," but in reviewing the series it feels like the photos are darker. I managed to make a snowman look sinister. There were some photos that look like they were barely lit. I can't say that I was going for a certain feeling or other during the photography process. But looking at the pictures now, I feel like I captured the holidays' essential moments: picking out a Christmas tree, building a snowman, caroling, kissing under the mistletoe. Simple and classic.

Another point to consider: every image in this year's series was in color. I have been trying to figure that one out, as I did so many black and whites last year. What changed? I didn't convert any of my images to black and white in the editing process; I don't remember feeling a need to, though I don't doubt that some of them would look good in black and white, maybe even better than in color.

Overall I'm happy with the result. And so, hopefully, will be the people on my Christmas card list.

Why We're Not Putting Up a Christmas Tree

Oscar el Gato "helps" with my Christmas card photo shoot.

Is it bad that I allowed my cat to chew on live Christmas lights for the sake of a shot? Oh well. Another gorgeous but completely by accident photo.

Carolers

Carolers, from my Christmas card photo shoot this last weekend.

As I said in my last post, the miniatures were by far the hardest things to shoot. But the more I go over the final product, the more and more I like them. I think out of all the photos I took, the miniature ones were my favorite.


More on my Flickr. I also shot ornaments, lights, and Oscar "helping."  :)

Christmas Photo Shoot

Packages, from my Christmas Card Photo Shoot.

I probably took around 400 pictures over the course of two shoots for this project, using my Christmas tree and various props - ornaments, townspeople, etc. Oscar even jumped in to "help."

Shooting the townspeople was difficult because they don't have much detail to their faces, and it was hard to get the light on them just right. I sort of had Sarah Vowell's book covers in mind when I was styling it. I think the photos didn't come out too bad. More on my Flickr, and more to come.