One More Sleep ‘Til Christmas

Christmas Portrait

Our traditional Christmas Eve consists of consuming a meal of assorted sausages, cheeses, and crackers while watching Muppet Christmas Carol.  We always have a fire going in the fireplace no matter the weather — it’s usually cool enough.  The final hidden presents are wrapped and placed around the Christmas tree and all go to bed with great anticipation.

This year my wife had Christmas pajamas for all the “littles” (some of which are growing to be “middles”).  She asked me to take a photo of the kids just before bedtime and the result is shown above.  I shot from (roughly) the kids’ eye level and used either manual or shutter-priority mode (can’t remember) with a 1/4 CTO gel’ed flash bounced off the wall/ceiling behind me.  In the upper left hand corner you can see the well-lit wall reflected in our glass doors.  Had this been a more “official” shot I would have switched angles, bounced the flash over my other shoulder, etc. in order to minimize the bright reflections.  The littlest one only has so much patience though so we to fire off some shots and call it a day.