How I turned a photo in to a Polar Express Dream! Cincinnati Ohio Photographer

When I was little, I’d say roughly about grade 2 or 3, our class was told to sit down for a story. We all sat down on the big rug on the floor by the chalkboard. The lights were dimmed a little and my teacher began to read us a story that to this day is still one of my favorites.

The story has to do with a little boy who is picked up by a train that magically appears in front of his house before Christmas. He is taken on a wild ride that night and is given a bell with no ringer when it’s over.

Know what story I’m talking about? ( I hope so!)

If you don’t its The Polar Express.

A Christmas Classic in my eyes.

The day the read us that story I was just so captivated by it and the idea. Our teacher even gave us little bells at the end of the day to take home- I still have mine.

This year I wanted to bring a little of that feeling back and provide a mini that more or less brought it to life once again for everyone.

I had my friend bring her two awesome kids over to test out my idea. I told them to wear their pj’s and come over ready to look amazed.

The funny thing about photographing 1-3 year olds is they have their own timeframes and you really can’t tell them what to do when it comes to a photo. If you look at the video close our littlest one kept walking off, being super focused on low hanging Christmas tree things.

Good thing I only need one good shot to make it work haha.

My main focus for the edit for this was to make sure the kids looked like they fit into the photo AND that they looked like it was shot at night. Since colors look different in the dark, especially red, that meant I had to mute the tones a little and add a lot of shadowing.

I also added a fun snow video overlay to the end photo. Like I said in one of my last posts, it’s becoming a favorite thing to do. You can add them as a facebook profile photo too. Definitely something I’ll be offering out from now on as a nice little extra treat ;)

All in all I love how it came out and it’s something I’m sure I’ll bring back next year but a little earlier in the season. I’m also thinking photos with the grinch next year as that is another movie I love for the holidays.

If you have fun ideas for holiday photos let me know in the comments!


Happy Holidays everyone!

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