NYC Holiday Portraits: Why These Years Matter

What to know before booking holiday portraits in NYC this season.

NYC holiday portraits are less about the holidays than they are about time. Every December looks a little different — a new tooth, a few inches, a haircut you didn’t approve of — and then one year, without any warning, your kids are simply older. The season stays the same. They don’t.

I’ve photographed enough families through enough Octobers to know how quickly this window closes. The years when your children still believe, still wear the outfit without negotiating, still want to be in the photo with you — those years are shorter than anyone tells you.

The Holidays Are When Childhood Is Most Visible

There’s a reason so many of our sharpest childhood memories live in December. The holidays compress everything that makes being small feel enormous: the anticipation, the rituals, the one night of the year when staying up late is sanctioned. Your children will not remember most Tuesdays. They will remember the holidays.

And here’s the part that gets me every time: you are in almost none of those memories the way you deserve to be. You’re behind the phone, in the kitchen, out of frame. Holiday portraits put you back in the picture — literally — during the exact years your kids will one day try hardest to remember.

Why Holiday Portraits Become the Photos That Matter

Most photos on your camera roll are documentation. A few become something else. The ones that get printed, framed, passed around at gatherings twenty years later — they’re almost always the ones where someone was small and the season was big.

A holiday portrait isn’t really for this year. This year, you know exactly what your child looks like. It’s for the version of you a decade from now who would give anything to see that face at that age again, and for the version of them who will want proof of what their childhood felt like. That’s the whole point of an heirloom: it’s made now, but it’s meant for later.

What a Holiday Session Actually Documents

Not the tree. Not the outfits, really. What a good holiday session documents is a specific, unrepeatable version of your family — who was two, who was six, who still fit on a lap, who insisted on holding the ornament. The details do the remembering for you.

That’s why I keep these sessions simple and unhurried. Fifteen or twenty minutes with children who are actually enjoying themselves will always outperform an hour of posing. The best frames come from the in-between moments anyway.

This Year at the Studio: Velvet Bleu

If this is the year you want holiday portraits of your family, this year’s event is called Velvet Bleu — a palette of deep burgundy, powder blue, and emerald green, all in velvet, at the studio in the Flatiron District.

There are two ways to book. Holiday Sessions are 15 minutes and include 3 images ($690). The Santa Experience is 20 minutes with a private Santa, 3 images, a North Pole letter, and a keepsake gift ($990). Both require a $300 retainer. More details here.

Priority list booking opens August 2nd at 8:00 PM, and general booking opens August 3rd at 9:00 AM. Spots are limited, and the Santa Experience books out first every year. You can join the priority list here.

Love, Melissa