This is how Vinitha Sankarsingh prepared this year for her family’s holiday photoshoot: She bought matching oatmeal-coloured sweaters for the boys. A tiny white hair bow for the baby. Brought along an arsenal of toy distractions to keep the children still. Plied them with promises of unlimited screen time.
But halfway through the family’s allotted 30 minutes, Theo, 4, was slumped down on the floor. Elias, 23 months old, was shrieking and making a break for the exit. Only Sarah – just five months old, and not yet walking – remained on the couch. Their father, Brian, was bribing them with Oreos, and the crumbs were everywhere. “Eli, come on, man,” he called out wearily. “Cookies are on the line.”
Outside, the temperature on that November afternoon was in the double digits, and pumpkin debris was still smeared on the sidewalk. But from October onward every year at Toronto’s Mint Room Studios, the space is transformed into a holiday factory. Photographers rent it by the day, or even hour, and an assembly line of families come through to capture their holiday memories in the form of a perfect holiday-card photo – even if the process of getting the photo isn’t always picture-perfect.
There are so many reasons why the holiday family photo tradition seems like it should be obsolete. There’s the ubiquity of camera phones and one-touch photo filtering. The fact that every one of us is taking photos of everything and everyone, all of the time. And there’s also the deluge of content we’re already posting every other time of year on social media.
Yet, the tradition endures. Year after year, families still line up to spend hundreds of dollars for these photos. And for their money, photographers like Carly McDonald – the Toronto-based photographer who was shooting the Sankarsinghs that afternoon – know what’s expected of them.
“We need to make sure we get that perfect Christmas card photo,” Ms. McDonald said. She switched from wedding photography to families four years ago, and her holiday bookings sometimes sell out within minutes. “It can get stressful.”
Her first family of the day was Cris Guo, Jocelyn Wei and their two children, Elliot, 2, and Celine, 1. They came dressed to match the room, in a mix of coffee-coloured shades. The room Ms. McDonald had rented there for the day was decorated in a style described vaguely as “salted caramel.” (There are nine rooms in total, all of them decorated in holiday themes with pleasing but perplexing names such as “reds to delight” and “timeless twist.”) The aesthetic of this room was light, bright and millennial – cream and blonde-wood furniture, brown velvet bows on the Christmas tree and plain kraft-paper-wrapped packages under it.
As they waited, Mr. Guo pulled a little tube of product out of his pocket. “It’s hair powder for kids,” he explained as he massaged it onto two-year-old Elliot’s scalp. “To hold the shape.”
Before kids, he rarely took photographs, Mr. Guo said. Now he has thousands of pictures on his phone. But many of the photos he takes are, by his own admission, terrible. The ease of digital media means he often snaps away without much thought or intention.
“When I see these photos,” he said, referring to the ones taken by Ms. McDonald, “they make me happy.”
Next up was the Anton family: Britney and Rodney, and their one-and-a-half-year-old son Asher. Like the other families, Britney likes to frame the prints as keepsakes to hang up in their home. And she prints holiday cards to send to family.
Rodney, a financial adviser, uses the photos for his business too, in the holiday cards he sends to clients. “They add a nice personal touch.”
Unlike the stiff Sears photos of the eighties, the family photos of the 2020s lean heavily into aspiration – these are photos you can’t DIY with your phone. They’re magazine-worthy “lifestyle” images produced in studios masking as Kardashian-worthy homes.
“Sometimes, people are like, ‘Whoa, is that your house?’” Britney said. “Our own house does not look like this.”
The Anton family plans to send out holiday cards to family and frame prints from their session with one-and-a-half-year-old son Asher.
In the case of the Anton family – as with every single other family that did a shoot with Ms. McDonald that afternoon – it was Britney, the mom, who had planned every single detail of the day.
Domenica Mongelli, who arrived with daughters Serena and Vienna, said that every year, the planning begins in the summer, when photographers begin accepting holiday bookings. Then she’ll spend the early part of fall planning outfits. After the shoot will come proofs, edits, designing and printing the holiday cards, then mailing.
She’s been sending these cards for so many years that family and friends have come to expect it. “I do feel some pressure.”
It’s not cheap either. The photoshoots can cost hundreds of dollars ($350 plus tax, in the case of Ms. McDonald). Often, printing and postage costs hundreds more.
“It’s a lot of work,” Ms. Mongelli said. “But I do love it.”
It’s also work that seemed, at least on that day, to go largely unrecognized. In the case of Ms. Mongelli, she wasn’t even in the photos. As her daughters posed in their brand-new dresses, she stood on the sidelines, hair undone, wearing leggings and sneakers.
And in the case of several other families, husbands or children groaned about having to participate. One husband taunted his wife by wearing socks that weren’t the ones she’d laid out for him.
When it came time for the Sankarsinghs’s photoshoot – and during one of only a few brief moments where she was actually seated – Vinitha reflected on why these holiday photos matter so much to her.
Yes, there’s the pressure of social media, she said. And the desire to have nice cards to send to friends and family. And the photos themselves are meaningful. They’re keepsakes that will allow her to hold onto at least a small slice of a time in her life that seems to be moving far, far too quickly.
But there’s one other thing.
“Honestly,” Ms. Sankarsingh said, “no one ever takes photos of me.”
She has thousands of pictures of her family. But she’s often the one taking the pictures. So of course she’s not in them.
She said this two-thirds of the way through the photoshoot. By that time, the next family was already waiting out in the hall. There were only eight minutes left.
There was a frantic energy in the room. Ms. McDonald’s voice was getting louder, and increasingly high-pitched. The kids growing more and more restless. Brian pleading with the boys not to smack each other.
Every few minutes or so, Ms. Sankarsingh called out: “Did we get it?” Each time, Ms. McDonald responded with a clenched – and not entirely convincing – nod.
Ms. McDonald took a swig out of her cup. “Wine,” she said. (It was coffee.)
Afterward, Ms. Sankarsingh sat, packing her things in the hallway. She looked exhausted and relieved. She felt good about things. Confident in Ms. McDonald’s abilities.
“It’s nerve-racking until we get the shot,” she said. “But I think we got it.”
