Vintage Holiday Inspiration

Christmas time is a wonderful time to get festive and creative with your photography. However, it’s also a time of year where we can get stuck with all the possibilities and end up not doing any of them. Last year I wanted to keep myself on track in the lead up to Christmas so I planned a Advent Photography Project and used Vintage Holiday Inspiration to guide me.

I captured and posted an image every day leading up to Christmas which was inspired by old vintage illustrations and images. It was such a great challenge to recreate with my family and it was lovely to see my followers check in to see what I had created each day. Seeing all the images at the end was so worth all the hard work and I would recommend planning your own advent project this year too. This project took a little bit of preparation, so I have outlined some key points below to make sure you make the most out of this period and create some beautiful advent memories with your families.

For more holiday inspiration, check out our Holiday Collab!

Where to Begin?

Now you want to do your own Vintage holiday Inspiration advent project, where on earth do you begin? First of all, you need to do some research and find all of your images you want to recreate. This can be quite time consuming, but you can find a lot digitally on Pinterest, Getty, Google images etc. You can also find beautiful illustrations in old books and old Christmas cards that you might have lying around. In total, I ended up finding about 30-40 images just in case some of my images didn’t work out like I had planned.

Dealing with children and the joys of chaotic everyday life can make some days super busy, so pre-planning is crucial for the success of this project. Once I had found all my images, I physically put them onto a board labelled 1-24, and styled them in a way that flowed really well which was perfect for my Instagram feed. Once you have all your images ready and set it all out, now you can get to the really creative part, styling!

Styling Your Images

Styling is really important for making your images really pop, I was a stylist before I was a photographer so any chance to style some images really well, I am there! When I started researching my pictures initially, I already had in mind the kind of images I wanted to recreate with the things I already had at home. For instance, I knew I had a cute little Christmas stocking and a beautiful fireplace which meant I could capture quite a few images with both of those in it.

Depending on how similar you want the images to be compared to the inspiration, you can always buy things to match like clothes etc. But remember, it is Christmas so try not to spend too much and keep my favourite motto in mind K.I.S.S (Keep It Simple Stupid). So go and raid your Christmas cupboard and get all those twinkly lights and tinsel out, Christmas is all about those reds and greens but maybe try get creative with your own colour palettes too! Also, when styling, think about textures and layering to really add depth and interest to your images.

Taking Your Images

The types of images you recreate will depend on whereabouts you live in the world, if you live somewhere that typically has snow you will probably have an easier time recreating those outdoor wintery images. When I did this project, I lived in a warmer part of the UK and it was quite hard to recreate a lot of the beautiful snow illustrations I was finding. The days might also be getting darker quicker now so getting out in the daylight could be a challenge, so maybe opt for some indoor images with some extra lighting for quality and festive ambience.

In a lot of my recreations, I really had to think about what was happening with the light, whether it was possible with natural light or artificial light. This meant I either had to rely on good natural light in the day or using an extra lighting source at night time. For instance, this image of my toddler on the stairs I knew had to be taken at night to get the same light and shadows as the inspiration. I turned the main lights off, fairy lights to the left-hand side for a nice glow and I also bounced a flash off the ceiling to create the light and shadows where I wanted them. If you haven’t invested in some lighting equipment, I would consider even just investing in a camera flash to bounce some light off the walls/ceiling manipulating the light to your advantage. 

What to do with Your Images

Once you have recreated all of your images, I highly recommend sharing all your hard work. Instagram it, blog about it, send them off to magazines or just simply print them all. Or why not print an advent calendar for next year using all of your beautiful images? I decided to take my images each day in December and then I shared them on my Instagram feed at the end of each day, but I understand not everyone has time for this.

Maybe you could create all of your images over a few days to save time or just recreate a couple of your favourites to share? Or, if you are super prepared you could take all of your images before December and then start sharing one a day from December the 1st. As well as sharing in Instagram stories, I also posted my images in a carousel to show the image for inspiration after my post. Carousels actually helps boost your engagement on your posts so this might be worth thinking about. Also make sure to credit the artist/photographer/source of your inspiration if you can as it’s always nice to promote an artist.

Give Yourself a Gift this Holiday Season with our Holly-Days Bundle!

Summery

This is a great little challenge for Christmas regardless of the photography you do, I mainly photograph family and self-portraiture but there are plenty of illustrations/images out there that you can recreate in your own way.  

The most important thing is to make this project your own and have fun with it, if you want to do 24 images in the snow then do it. Recreate some old magazine covers such as John Bull or The Saturday Evening Post, or just do 24 completely random recreations! I just love a project for keeping motivated, and I love looking back on this one from last year. Hopefully you will enjoy the creative process of this challenge and enjoy looking back on all of your images too. If you do try this Vintage holiday inspiration advent project this Christmas, please tag @hellostoryteller and use the hashtag #hs_adventcalendar to share with us all! 

Have a Merry Christmas!