I love the tradition of baking holiday cookies so much that I host an annual cookie exchange for a group of my girlfriends. My girls have come to love this special tradition, each year they are excited to pick out the recipe and we spend an afternoon baking together. Each year I take images of the process. As the girls get older, our schedule gets a little crazy and it can be tough to include this tradition. This year, we baked one day and iced/decorated the next. Some of my favorite images were of my eldest icing the cookies the day after we did the baking. I put her next to our kitchen window, gave her the cookies and let her go to town with icing and sprinkling. We live in a heavily wooded area and even at this time of year without leaves on the trees, our home does not get a lot of natural light. In order to get adequate light illuminating my daughter during this activity, I choose to put her close to our kitchen window. I set up the cookie trays and had her seated at a 45 degree towards the light. As she iced the cookies in this position, I moved around her taking pictures to capture this activity from a variety of angles (the side, in front, above and behind). In addition, I wanted to experiment with some close-up macro shots, so I put some macro filters on my 35mm lens. I used Vivitar Close-Up Macro Lenses, which includes 4 different diopter filters. This is an affordable way to explore macro photography prior to purchasing a lens. You can find these at https://www.bhphotovideo.com/
The holiday season can get so busy, but try to find time to document your traditions!
