Behind the Scenes of a Christmas Mini Session
There’s always a little more happening outside the frame than you see in the finished photo.
Before launching this year’s Christmas Mini Sessions, I invited a family to my North Miami studio for a test shoot. It gave me a chance to photograph the new set, work through the flow I had planned, and make sure everything worked the way I envisioned it before welcoming my first clients.
It also gave us a few behind-the-scenes photos of what these sessions actually look like from my side of the camera.
A plan, with plenty of room to adapt
Christmas Minis are only ten minutes long, so I go into every session knowing the sequence of photographs I want to create. We typically start with simple portraits before introducing props and different groupings.
But photographing children rarely goes exactly according to plan, and I don't really expect it to.
I pay attention to what they're responding to and adjust as we go. Sometimes that means changing activities, turning something into a game, giving a child a minute, or simply moving on and coming back to an idea later.
During this test shoot, for example, I showed one of the boys how to hold the rope so he could pretend he was pulling a sleigh. It's a small thing, but giving children something to do can work much better than continually asking them to pose or smile.
The little things happening outside the frame
There is also quite a bit of adjusting happening between photographs. I might move a prop a few inches, change where someone is sitting, bring something into the scene, or take it away entirely.
Here I was finding just the right spot for the snowman between the boys before taking the next photograph.
And yes, the antlers are part of the job. I usually wear something festive for Christmas Minis, whether it's antlers, a red bow, or a Christmas T-shirt. If I'm asking everyone else to get into the Christmas spirit, it seems only fair. 😊
What you see, and what I see
One of my favorite things about these behind-the-scenes photographs is how different the room looks from the finished images.
From outside the frame, there are light stands, equipment, props waiting their turn and me moving around the set. Through my camera, all of that disappears.
That's really what happens during a Christmas Mini Session. There's a plan behind it, but there's also a lot of adapting, playing and making small adjustments as we go. The ten minutes move quickly, and my job is to keep them moving while still leaving enough room for the personalities in front of my camera to come through. And apparently, to do much of it from the floor while wearing antlers :)
If you'd like to see this year's set and learn more about the sessions, you can visit my Christmas Mini Sessions in Miami page for dates, details, and booking information.
