My best wishes to all of you for holidays filled with joy that lasts throughout the year. Remember to photograph the moments that capture the essence of your holidays - not just the expected shots that you think you should take. Posed portraits are nice, but the candid, real life moments will bring back special memories in years to come.

Although I have a lot of camera gear, at family gatherings I often prefer a point and shoot. The small size and speed of operation lets me keep the camera with me and be slightly less obtrusive (although Josh might disagree!) The built in flash is convenient too. I recently purchased a Canon G10 that I’ll be using. It’s considerably larger than the Canon Elph I’ve used for years, but it has a lot more features as well. I appreciate being able to shoot in RAW as well as the ability to do some video recording. I’m amazed at the range of features and quality of images from some very tiny cameras!

Using a point and shoot leads to an interesting mindset though - I have an initial tendency to pick up the camera and expect it to automatically set everything correctly. And the fact is that the manufacturer’s have spent a lot of research and money to make that happen. But many of the camera’s allow for some manual over ride - which is well worth doing for even better shots, particularly regarding use of flash.

If your camera has video recording abilities, this is a great time to get out the manual and start experimenting. Even if you haven’t used the feature before, you might enjoy having a few video clips to add to your still shots. Recording someone’s voice can be a huge addition. While it can be fun to hear someone’s thoughts at a particular moment, being able to hear the sound of their voice may become even more special in the future - whether because they’ve grown up or because they’ve passed on.

Then, when you have a few minutes - perhaps even while still at the family gathering, download the memory card into Aperture. You can have everyone view the images with you in Full screen mode or even better yet, select the better ones and create a slideshow to share. Chances are everyone will laugh and moan and groan together and perhaps it will become yet another part of your holiday ritual. (Although Aperture can’t handle the video clips, you can copy them to the desktop and navigate to the files using the Finder. Then double click on the files to play them using Quicktime Player.)

What’s your favorite holiday shot? Feel free to post a description and perhaps a link to the shot.