Long gone are the days of the somber holiday photo card, with all of the players decked out in stiff formal clothing and configured in stiff, awkward poses. Instead, today’s families are opting for fun, natural portraits that show off their clan’s unique personality and the photo shoot’s underlying emotion.

Photographer Jennifer George uses her Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 VC and 28-75 f/2.8 lenses to shoot holiday photos and cards for her own family, friends, and clients. “I can’t live without my 17-50,” she says. “I love how fast it is, and how close I can get to my subjects. When I shot my pregnancy book, I shot almost the whole book using that lens. The 28-75mm f/2.8 is the other lens I have with me always.”

To achieve memorable holiday portraits, George veers somewhat from the typical portrait rulebook. “This is the type of photography where you break rules a lot,” she explains. “My goal is for my subjects to be interacting with me and with each other. It’s much more dynamic to have them interact and to have fun. I’d rather evoke emotion than simply tell the subjects what to do.”

First, always ensure you do your prep work before you start shooting the eager family. “Find your light, set up the room or the yard the way you want it, adjust your settings on your camera, check your depth-of-field, and do your test shots. I know it’s easy to get overly excited and just bring your subjects right in before you’ve done all of that, but you don’t want to waste your shooting time doing all that setup, especially if restless kids are involved.”

Getting creative with the setup of your holiday shots can be accomplished with just a few minor adjustments. “Little things can really make a big difference,” she says. “For example, use backdrops—you can even use sheets for this purpose, which you can pin up against a wall or in your backyard. You can use a plain white sheet or choose more fun colors if you’re shooting kids, like maybe light green or pink. I did this outside recently for a family with a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old—I pinned that white backdrop up and had the kids just interact with their parents.”

You can achieve similar results indoors. “For one shoot I recently did, I took red curtains, tacked them up, and opened up the French doors to the kitchen to let the light into the room,” she says. “I had the family stand in front of the curtains and just hug each other and goof around a bit. It resulted in some amazing images.”

Use furniture as a focal point to gather your subjects around. “Upholstered armchairs are really great,” George says. “I can get up to a family of five around an armchair. For example, you could have Dad sitting down, with one kid on his lap, Mom sitting on one arm of the chair, another child on the other arm, and perhaps an older child coming up from behind the chair. Just push the chair over by the window. If you’re doing more than one person, you’ll likely have to shoot at at least f/5.6, but if you’ve got one or two kids and you can get them to sit still and close together with their eyes on the same plane level, you can shoot at f/2.8.”

Creatively incorporate props for cards that will be talked about for years. “I’ve put everyone in Santa hats, for example,” says George. “One year I acquired life-size piñatas of sheep and donkeys and did a whole manger scene. It was really cute as a holiday card. I worked really hard on it—I costumed it, set directed, worked hard on the lighting. It was inexpensive and fun, and we used those piñatas for years afterward as decorations around our house.”

You can also stick to thematic holiday clothing (which can work wonderfully for holiday cards), but George has a different suggestion for photographers who want to stretch their imaging capabilities and create a picture that could end up in their portfolios. “Don’t necessarily go thematic for a holiday shot,” she says. “Instead, go for a classic family picture that you can use forever. If you have thematic clothing or backgrounds, you might not necessarily put that portrait up in the living room—if you stick with a more classic look, however, you’ll put it up and keep it up all year round.”

While she allows each family’s personality and situation to dictate the direction of the images, rather than rigidly subscribe to set compositional techniques, George does offer several tips for making sure you’re showing your subjects in the best possible manner. “If I’m working indoors, it’s tighter quarters, so I might focus more on head and shoulder shots,” she says. “If I’m outside, obviously I have more working area, so I can place Dad in the foreground and maybe Mom and the baby in the background, with my leading lines flowing from Dad in the lower left of the frame to Mom and the baby in the upper right. Connect your subjects in a way that’s realistic and flattering to everybody.”

Be aware of your angles and presentation, advises George. “No straight arms—everything should be curved so there’s nothing cutting through the image,” she says. “And be cautious of awkward angles: If you want someone looking sideways, for example, have her open their shoulder by pushing it out so she’s not stretching her neck over her shoulder.”

Even though she likes to keep it as natural as possible, George does offer simple positioning instructions to help maximize the shot. “Make sure your subjects don’t tilt their heads up—a little of the chin down is flattering, though,” she says. “I also have the subjects turn slightly sideways toward the camera, not flat and straight on. And the subject should be facing into the photo; even in a group, everyone's body should be turned toward the center, not away from it. That’s especially important in a holiday image that’s all about family.”

For shots with multiple subjects, George suggests the “shape” method, as she did with three siblings at a recent shoot: “Try and create a heart shape, triangle, or circle with multiple people,” she says. “Use their arms, shoulders, and heads to create that shape. Have heads at different levels, not all the same height—stagger them for effect.”

Using the 17-50mm lens at f/2.8, George was able to achieve a nice shallow depth-of-field and get up close to one father/son duo. “I was standing less than 10 feet from them, which did help in getting fun, relaxed expressions, as I was close enough to really interact with them,” she says.

Most important, control the mood and conditions “on set” and help everyone to relax. “Always tell them that you’re going to have fun—you’re setting the tone for the shoot,” says George. “I always recommend that you start off calm and then build up to be a little more excited and crazy. Calm shows that you’re in control and makes your subjects comfortable.”

The most important aspect of a holiday portrait shoot is to find the most flattering lighting, according to George. “Never shoot in the middle of the day when the sun is directly overhead,” she advises. “If you’re outside, find open shade—by that I mean under a tree or next to a building or some other large object that’s casting a shady area. Have your subjects look directly toward the brightest point of the light; otherwise, they’ll have a muddy, shaded look in the picture.”

If you’re shooting indoors, walk around the house and find the window with the best available light that’s soft and flattering. “You don’t want to shoot in the middle of the day, when the sun is directly overhead, and you don’t want the light coming directly into the window so that strong streaks of light are hitting your subjects,” she explains. “You simply want the sun filtering into the room so the entire room is filled with a soft light. The window should be big enough that the light goes around you as you’re standing in front of the window and still hits your subjects; you don’t want your subjects any more than 10 feet or so from that window. Sliding glass doors are great for this purpose; just make sure you open the doors if you can so that the window panes don’t block the light.”

Many families head to local parks or beaches when creating their holiday photos and cards. This is a viable option, but George adds some precautionary advice. “It’s tough even for pros to shoot at the beach,” she says. “It’s critical to find that sweet, golden light, which usually is about one hour before sunset. Find an area where the sun is not coming directly from the water source directly toward you. You can also turn your subjects at a little bit of an angle so that you get some of the natural sunlight cascading over their faces and features. Sometimes I’ll have people gaze out at the ocean like they’re looking at a boat or a surfer and start hugging and laughing—that way, they’re not looking directly at the camera, but their whole face is lit up by the sunlight.”

“If you can keep the shutter speed at 1/250th, you’re going to have an exposure on many of today’s cameras that’s pretty right on,” George continues. “And play with your ISO a bit. I can tell you that if I walked out to an ocean shoot, I’d likely be aiming to shoot at f/8, 1/250th of a second, around sunset, at between 400 and 600 ISO. And if you can’t get the sun on their faces, it’s OK to use a little bit of fill flash.”

Beware, however, of what George calls “consumer color contamination”: “This is especially important during holiday shoots, because people often like to wear all white,” she says. “However, if they wear all white, you’re going to get a blue tint from the UV light. Or if they wear all white and you use flash for fill, that can cause blowout, where your subjects will just end up in the image as one big white mass. I’ll advise my subjects to not wear pure white—I tell them to go for cream or tan clothing, or even black.”

Where you position your subjects can also alter the colors of your shot. “If your subjects are by a tree, for example, their skin tones might get a greenish tint—look in your camera’s owner’s manual and learn how to adjust the white balance or how to correct this in whatever software program you may use after the shoot,” she says. “I try to stay near buildings, if I can, because they’re usually more neutral colors that don’t cast a color on people.”

For more of Jennifer George’s images, go to www.jennifergeorgephotography.com.