Photo Gifts – Choosing and Taking Pictures
There’s little more precious in this world than the treasured memories we hold of happy times spent and important events lived through. Photographs bring those memories to life, and personalized photo gifts are a thoughtful way to create tangible links between the people we love and the memories that bind us.
Choosing the Best Photo
The personalized photo gifts that will mean the most to your recipient are the ones that trigger their emotions. Choose a photo that captures a special moment that happened to a special person.
Ideal photos are groups of friends celebrating a birthday, or candid shots of young children opening Christmas presents. Other ideas are photos of cherished pets or prized flower gardens.
It could be a photo of themselves enjoying a special anniversary, a baby’s first steps for a grandmother or the moment an angling enthusiast landed his biggest (or smallest) fish.
Prized objects too, are suitable as photo gifts. Do you know a vintage car enthusiast, or a lover of ancient castles? Whatever anyone’s passion is, that gives you a ready-made idea store of possible and unusual photo gift ideas.
Taking Photos for Gifts
Sometimes you may have an idea for the kind of photo you’d like to turn into a gift, but not have that image in your existing collection. Maybe you know someone with a birthday coming up or you’re thinking ahead to Christmas, these are good ideas to help you get started in designing your gift.
Here are some tips that might help.
Alter Your Angle:Portraits of people can sometimes be a little boring. Instead of sitting kids down for their photo, have them jump up and down and take the picture while they’re in mid-air. It’ll take some practice but you’ll get great facial expressions as well as a picture full of life and movement.
Zoom in Close:Baby pictures nearly always focus on the baby’s face, but babies also have adorable hands and feet. Taking a close-up of baby’s hands would make lovely, unusual and highly personalized photo gifts.
Use a Prop:A prop is anything that your subject can do or hold while the photo is being taken. Think along the lines of children playing with toys or stroking pets, adults arranging flowers or involved with a favorite hobby. Props, used as naturally as possible help a photo tell a story and bring out the personality of the person depicted.
Remember the Rule of Thirds:Imagine a tic-tac-toe grid drawn across the printed photo. Frame your photo in the viewfinder of your camera so that the subject of the picture falls on one of the four points where the lines cross. The idea is to have the main action of the image slightly off-center. This gives the picture better balance and makes the photo more appealing.
When you give a photo gift you’re giving the gift of memory; a little lift of emotion whenever the recipient’s eye falls on it. It’s a gift of love. And that’s the biggest gift of all.
