Its that time of the year that people are rushing about sorting things out in time for Christmas, one of which is Christmas cards. Now I’m not yet at the stage in my life where I feel the need to send Christmas cards myself, but I’ve been involved in this laborious task as my dad has recruited my photography services to help make his own cards this year. Instead of buying cards from a shop as usual, he asked me to take a Christmas-themed photo which he could then get printed on a card.

I took the photo last Christmas using my Canon 350D with a 50mm f1.8 lens on a tripod. The image is “as taken” and hasn’t been altered – I got the rich colour by turning off all the lights apart from the blue lights which were on the Christmas tree.

There are a number of companies which now do on-demand printing – the two I shortlisted were Photobox and Moo; my Dad ended up going with Photobox. Apparently the web-software for designing the cards is a bit clumsy, but I’ve seen the finished result and it looks very nice (you can even get them to pre-print your christmas message on the inside). One thing I would say is that they could use slightly thicker card as they are a bit limp, meaning that the card doesnt stand up perfectly.

My photographer friend Chris has also made his own cards using a very nice photo, and he used Moo for the printing. He has just received the cards and I hear he is very pleased with them too.

Tags: Canon, card, christmas, moo, Photo, photobox, photography, tree