Gifts from Photographers
With the holiday season upon us, we’re seriously thinking of the best gifts we can offer our loved ones–gift ideas for photographers, as well as from photographers. What gifts can we, as photographers, offer our families and friends?
Let’s start with the obvious:
– pictures:
Family Portraits – in studio, as well as on location photo sessions; don’t only email those pictures, but also print the best ones and offer the prints, best as ready-to-display photographs–you can print, mat, and frame the old fashion way or you can offer metal prints or canvases, or anything in between
– family albums:
Maybe now’s the perfect time to design those family albums. You might want to start ahead of time because the process is time-consuming. I’ve been through it several times myself. It’s also fun and brings back memories. Definitely worth all the work!
– calendars:
Use those family images (or other images) to design calendars. It is that time of the year. Include personalized birthdays, anniversaries, etc., as well as quotes, verses or whatnot. Customize the calendar and make it special.
– greeting cards:
Again, use your photographs to design unique greeting cards. Or offer sets of greeting cards as gifts.
– offer a photography tutoring session as a gift to someone who’s interested in photography, or critique a portfolio or only a handful of images; in other words, give your two cents as a photographer to an aspiring photographer
– experiment; try something new, something that you’ve always wanted to try, but never had the time to actually give it a try; you might have friends that are willing to pose for you and who’re off from work during the holidays; talk to them and find out if they’re interested in the kind of photo shoot you have in mind; if the interest is mutual, schedule the photo shoot and go for it; have fun while at it, too; offer a few of the resulting images to your model(s); maybe show them a few images and surprise them with, again, a print of the best image from the photo shoot.
Photographing family portraits also means photographing couples. Here are a few examples:
– offer your photography services to those in need, perhaps to support a cause you believe in, or use your design skills to create a logo, a business card, a book cover or the like
– offer to help with image restoration, especially when it comes to old images, in particular, old family images
A few words on image restoration:
It’s a lengthy process. It requires attention to detail, as well as a lot of patience. It’s not for everybody, but if you end up designing a family album, you might have to restore a few images, a few very old images.
Either way, use the holidays as a reason to offer your help, as photographers to those closest to you and those who might need it the most, especially during this time of the year.
Happy Holiday gifting!
And as always, thanks for stopping by!
Alina Oswald 