Documenting the magic of the holidays with photographs is a great way to keep the memories alive long after the season ends. Whether you’re planning to send out Christmas cards with some family pics, or you just want to make sure to document your kids at this stage in their lives, it’s easy to take professional-looking, dynamic pictures even if you don’t have a fancy camera. The portrait mode setting on your phone and a couple of these TikTok Christmas photo ideas should be enough to produce some truly epic shots this holiday season.
And don’t forget to include yourself in some of the photos as well. It’s so easy to get lost in taking pictures of everybody else, and then you’ll look back and wish you were in more of the memories. They invented the self-timer for a reason!
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Matching Jammies
Family Tree
Create a sort of Christmas “tree” shape by stacking family members on top of each other for the photo. This is easiest to do when lying on the ground. And if you have some photo editing skills, you can take separate photos of everybody and stack them in a photo editing program like TikToker @girlwithacellphone did.
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Wreath Prop
TikToker @lyssijphotography recommended using a wreath as a framing prop when taking holiday photos. You can either hold the wreath in front of the camera lens yourself or let the child hold it, but either way it’ll make for fun and festive snapshots.
Box Collage
On TikTok, @esquaredphotography created a kind of Brady Bunch–style family photo grid for the holidays. To replicate it, you need a large box (@esquaredphotography got one from a furniture store), a couple of decorations, and then pose all the family members in the box one at a time.
After that, you can edit the photos into one larger grid photo to make it look like the kids are whispering to, looking at, or pointing to the people in the box next to them or below them, etc.
TV Background
Don’t want to set up a whole holiday scene for your family photos? You can copy @jdthecameraguy, who simply found a festive-themed photo to put on his TV. YouTube has a ton of holiday screensaver-type videos that you can use for this. Then use portrait mode and lower the exposure on your phone to perfectly blur the background and make it look like the TV background is actually just your holiday scenery.
Wrapping Paper Cutout
On TikTok, @lizzymae_33 taped a sheet of wrapping paper in a doorway and cut holes in the center of the paper for her family to stick their heads through. It gave the pictures a festive touch without a ton of effort or expense required. Don’t forget to have the family pets take their turn in the photos!
Piles of Decor
A fun way to spruce up a holiday photo is to take it from an above angle while the person is lying down with Christmas decorations surrounding them. Seen here is an example of a bunch of Christmas ornaments around the person’s head. You can also do a pile of present bows like @_briannemartin did on TikTok.
