Photo Tips – Birthday Photos

What do you photograph at birthdays?  I wanted to share a few of the things that I like to photograph on that special day in our home.

Cake

Do you buy a cake or make a cake for the birthday person?  Is there a family favourite that you always make or buy?  Is there a theme cake?  I always try to take a photo of the cake so we can look back each year to see what creation I have come up with.

 

Grant’s Car Crash Cake was perfect for his 11th birthday!  He loves anything to do with cars and racing so he loved his cake!

Age or Special Birthday

Is it just another year or is it a milestone year?  Grab a photo of the candles on the cake to represent what age is being celebrated or if there is a special decoration to commemorate the day don’t forget to get a photo of that!

Sixteen Candles…

Sixteen is a special birthday in Nova Scotia as you can write your learners driving test.  Ben was pretty proud to show this off!  He passed!!!

A decoration symbolizing the number of years is a great photo op with the birthday girl or boy!

Gifts

Is there a special gift or a surprise gift? Snap a photo!

Grant was pretty excited to receive roller blades from Nanny and Papa!  He had no idea he was getting those!

Portrait

I like to have the birthday person pose for a photo alone to show what they look like at that age, especially a child because they change so quickly.

Grant seemed to wake up looking older the morning of his 11th birthday!

Blowing out the Candles

Not always easy to capture the moment they blow out the candles.  Before and after work ok though!

Before…

After…

Traditions

Does your family have a tradition that you always do on birthdays?  Butter or icing on the nose, birthday spanks…we tried a new tradition this year.  Grant’s birthday is January 4th so when he woke up on his birthday this year we had decorated the Christmas tree for his birthday.

He was shocked when he woke up to the tree decorated for him!

Guests

It is fun to look back on photos to see who you invited to your parties each year.  Grab a group shot if you can as friends change as you are growing up.

Lauren’s 18th birthday celebration with some of her closest friends.  This was her last year of high school so many of her friends were not here this year because they are away at different universities.  So glad I have this photo!

Party Location

Was the party at your home or do you go to a different location each year for the celebraton?

Little boys plus birthday parties equals mess!  I like to go out to celebrate and keep them busy and then I go home to a clean house!

Decorations

Did you make special decorations for the party or a colour theme?

For Lauren’s Golden Birthday I did gold treats, yellow flowers and yellow balloons for 17 on the 17th!

Reaction

Did you surprise someone for a special birthday celebration, a surprise gift, a surprise guest?

Ben was super thrilled with his new golf push cart that we gave him for his 16th!  You can see the excitement is the size of his smile as he is looking at his Dad.

Family

It is always important to me to capture family photos on birthday celebrations.  Who was there that year to celebrate together are the special photos for me.

Grant loves to have all of his family together on most days, but to have everyone home for his birthday makes him feel even more special!

Cake My Day

After the birthday photos are taken the most important piece to that is to print them!  Whether you are a traditional scrapbooker or digital scrapbooker Creative Memories has a a new collection for you to display your birthday photos in a fun and colourful way – Cake My Day!  Here are a couple of pages I created for Grant’s album.

Happy Birthday Grant!