Don’t even act like you’re too cool for this. You aren’t. The family portrait -taken at Sears in front of a gray backdrop or on your immaculate, Rococo-inspired front room-shall be around long after the fossils of cockroaches decay.

The Challenge

When you’re home (or not) this Christmas, take a family portrait. It may be earnest, a parody or just a whole reboot of the theory as we are aware of it. I just ask that you are taking it the photo yourself in place of hire out.

The Example

Our lead shot was shared by Flickr member Peter Galvin . In the event you hadn’t seen a family portrait before, now you’ve got!

The Method

A tripod. A timer (once you run into the shot). These are good ideas you already knew.

But you can consider lighting. Family portraits are all about clarity and detail (though, be happy to buck this trend), and the most important to all it is light. However you don’t have a lighting set to call your individual, a straightforward bounce board (reflective white paper) can do wonders inside the right conditions…though one probably won’t be enough, reckoning on the scale of your family.

Also, be happy to enlist the assistance of Photoshop or any strange photographic approach to put your personal spin on this.

The Rules – READ THESE

1. Submissions have to be your personal.
2. Photos need to be taken since this contest was announced.
3. Explain, briefly, the equipment, settings, technique and story behind shot.
4. Email submissions to contests@gizmodo.com, not me.
5. Include 800px wide image (200KB or less) AND a 2560×1600 sized in email. I know that your photo won’t fall into those exact high rez dimensions, so whatever native resolution you’re using is ok.
6. One submission per person.
7. Use the correct SUBJECT line to your email (more info on that below)

Send your best photo by Monday, December 27th at 8AM Eastern to contests@gizmodo.com with ” Family Portrait” within the subject line. Save your files as JPGs, and use a FirstnameLastnameFamilyPortrait.jpg (800px wide) and FirstnameLastnameFamilyPortraitWallpaper.jpg (2560px wide) naming conventions. Include your shooting summary (camera, lens, ISO, etc) inside the body of the email in addition to a story of the shot in a number of sentences. And don’t skip this story part because it’s often essentially the mostsome of the most enjoyable part for us all beyond the shot itself!

And in the event you’d wish to share more of your family/home through the holidays, my site Life, Panoramic would really like to have you.

Source

This post is tagged: family portrait, family portraits, member peter, native resolution, photographic approach