Using your own vacation photos for invitation cards, greetings cards or super cute holiday cards is an idea that is very popular these days, especially since there are plenty of card services that offers you the chance to put basically anything on your cards. Did you took some nice pictures on the beach, with your whole family, and you want other family relatives to see you? You can put those pictures on the cards you send when it’s Christmas or someone close has a birthday party.

Very often your holiday will fall between events when you might send or receive gifts from family or friends. This is the best opportunity to create a unique invitation or thank you card using your own holiday photos. You may also consider creating funny invitations or postcards to send to all your family members or friends as a story of your latest trip. For aspiring or professional photographers, you can even use these invitation cards like a business card, giving them out to interested people or potential clients who want to find out where to discover more of your work.

Here are a some important things to keep in mind if you want to use your vacation pictures as holiday or Christmas cards:

1. Pick your selfies with the highest resolution. If you’ve edited your pictures with an app, be sure to only crop the pics when necessary and use “save as” or settings in the highest resolution to avoid losing too much quality.
2. Let your personalities shine, be yourself, be relaxed in your selfies. It’s important to have fun while doing your photos!
3. Use a tripod, or a stabilizing system, if you want to make photos that show a greater area than just your faces. This also is very important because you all want to be in those photos. The days of “Where is John? John was taking the picture” are long gone.

In the weeks leading up to your vacation, do some thorough research online. Everyone’s method is different, but you want to consider looking at other pictures captured at that same location, also check articles discussing important photography spots, or even Google Earth satellite images. Make a list with all the amazing locations you want to photograph. Think at the position of the sun because it will affect your photo quality. Determine whether each attraction is best visited at midday, sunset or sunrise. You can also prepare a list with basic ideas you want to implement once on location.

Now that you know how to make almost perfect pictures that captures you travel adventure, and all your family members are present on those pictures, you can choose a quality card maker (hint: always check what kind of paper they use as photo paper quality is also very important) and select the best pictures to print on the cards you send to friends and family on special occasions. For example, if you want to send a few customized photo Christmas cards you can use BasicInvite, a family owned company that has been designing and printing wedding stationery in Utah for over fifteen years.