Double exposure

NEW YORK – Coming to a mailbox near you: scores of smiling, beaming faces on holiday photo cards. With each holiday season – and each new digital camera given as a gift – more families forgo Norman Rockwell-like illustrations or funny Far Side cards in favor of a photo to send their best wishes.

The trade group Photo Marketing Association International estimates a whopping 270 million photo greeting cards were sent last year, enough for each person in the U.S. save the 30-plus million who live in California.

In a frenzied world filled with mass-market products, people are looking to personalize greetings to friends and family, and advances in technology keep making it easier and cheaper to do so, industry representative say.

With no film costs or limitations, families can freely experiment with different kinds of photos that convey different images. Increasingly customizable printing options allow them to choose a unique message to match. And photo companies continue to offer more and more design options to wrap up the whole package. The overall effect is an intimate greeting that immediately brings you up to date on someone’s life.

“Digital photos have allowed us to do a lot of this,” says 50-year industry veteran Brian Ainsworth, owner of Photos Ar’ Nice, a photo lab and camera store in Gainesville, Fla. “You couldn’t manipulate a negative on paper this way. … We’re seeing a new era of greetings.”

Ainsworth installed kiosks in his store five years ago that allowed customers to be in charge of the design of the card, including photo cropping, greeting wording and type style. He says he made a point to offer software that is easy to use so, for example, a mother with an infant in a stroller (which conveniently fits under the kiosk) can create a card in minutes and never have to really take her mind off the baby.

The cards are being produced by professional printers and DIYers alike. The photo marketing group says that more than 102 million cards were done on home computer printers in 2005; close to 13 million on home specialty photo printers; 34 million at instant kiosks; 61 million at minilabs; and another almost 56 million people ordered them online.

Ainsworth says those numbers likely will go up as folded photo cards – cards printed on heavier, more elegant card stock – become the norm, replacing the 4-inch-by-8-inch single sheet card on photo paper that was the standard just a few years ago.

Greeting card companies are responding to this urge to personalize by embracing photo cards instead of knocking them down as competition. Hallmark has increased the number of photo-holder cards, the ones that serve as decorative frames, from 14 last year to 20 this year. Martha Stewart recently partnered with Kodak EasyShare Gallery to create a series of ready-to-go cards that only await the family portrait.

This all goes beyond Christmas cards of course, with Americans putting their pets’ faces on a postage stamp and turning their kids into pinup models for a grandparent’s calendar. Ainsworth notes that last year he offered only three designs for Halloween photo cards; this year it was nine. And he expects soon there will be many more photo-based wedding announcements and thank-you cards.

While neither Stewart or Kodak could offer any market research, the partners clearly saw an opportunity in the market, leading them to offer 60 card styles, including an accordion style that has room for eight pictures.

More families probably exchange photos now during the holidays than at any other point in time although there was a heyday of scallop-edged black-and-white family portraits from about 1955-65, says Joe Struble, an archivist at the George Eastman House, a photography museum in Rochester, N.Y.

He recalls that during his own childhood his family would get two or three annually, always from the same families. At the museum there is a series of holiday portraits of a family that started with five children plus mom and dad – “all the portraits were very ‘Leave It to Beaver’ and ‘Ozzie and Harriet’ ” – and ended several years later with 13 children. They were basically in the same pose each year but with a different baby on the mother’s lap, Struble says.

Things are far less formal now, of course.

Nicole Gann, of Newton, Mass., plans to send a photo card of her 4 1/2-year-old daughter and 1 1/2-year-old son this year. She sent two card versions two years ago: Friends and family on the West Coast got one with then-toddler Leah playing in the snow, while anyone who lived in a cold climate got an autumn-day backdrop.

She’s attracted both by the ease of creating the cards and the smile that’s almost sure to cross a recipient’s face.

“Photo cards are so popular that we just added a desk calendar. Those have become popular in the last two months – they’re 12 or 13 months of photos with people adding their own captions, family birthdays and special occasions,” says Catherine Bassett, senior manager of product marketing at VistaPrint, a Lexington, Mass.-based printing company. “People don’t want to buy standard products anymore. We live in a personalized society, especially around the holiday season.”

At VistaPrint, sales from at-home shutterbugs now outpace those from small businesses at the holidays, a change from when they opened 11 years ago, she said.

“Everyone has a camera, everyone has access to a computer, everyone can upload their photos. You can even avoid computers and upload directly from their cameras,” adds Mania Chait, VistaPrint vice president of public relations. “It’s quicker and less expensive than making something yourself. You don’t have to take three hours,” she says.

Or spend a lot of money.

At Ainsworth’s Photos Ar’ Nice, folded cards are $1.35 if you order 25 and photo-paper cards are 68 cents; VistaPrint charges less than $1 for most cards.

The best photos for cards are those that are well composed, feature nicely dressed subjects – and make sure no one has a dirty face, domestic guru Stewart says.

Trey Laird, creative director for Gap and the man behind the BabyGap ads, says he shoots for “a real moment.”

“There is nothing cuter than a little kid having a great time and expression genuine emotion – like a 3-year-old running on the beach or playing in the sand or a child climbing a tree. What’s perfect is capturing a real moment and conveying the personality of their child rather than trying to fake or force something,” Laird says.

When he’s picking out photos of his own family, he goes for the ones that you can see the expression on the faces. He also encourages trying black and white photos; they’ll look more like a classic portrait.

Kelly Cook of Cambridge, Mass., took the picture of her toddler daughter that ended up on the family holiday card last year because Leina is more relaxed with mom behind the lens than a professional photographer.

Cook, 35, dressed up Leina as Santa Claus and had a whole scene set with the gifts she’d already wrapped. “She wasn’t walking then. It was much easier,” Cook recalls with a laugh.

The Cooks didn’t send a photo card until after Leina, now 19 months old, was born. She acknowledges poking a bit of fun at people who’d send pictures of their dog. But now she sees photo cards as a way of staying in touch with people she wouldn’t normally send a picture to – for “the more extended list of friends and family.”

For each card Cook sends, she’ll probably get one back.

“I have a wall in my kitchen full of everyone’s photo card. I might have to take some down to make room for this year,” she says.