You are the one who takes them. Which is why, in the only record your family keeps of this year, you are a hand at the edge of the frame.
The list books 8 October, two days before everyone else.
What it costs you
School breaks on 14 December and most of Dubai gets on a plane.
So the photograph you meant to take gets taken in a departure hall, by a stranger, with three of you squinting and the fourth looking at a phone. Every year. And every year you say next year we will do it properly.
Next year is now nine weeks away.
You have tried this before
You booked an hour somewhere with a white wall and a wicker chair. You bought the outfits. You spent the first twenty minutes threatening a four-year-old in a car park, and the photographer said say cheese, and your youngest cried, and you paid for forty pictures of your family being told to sit still.
That is not photography. That is a hostage negotiation with a light stand.
So we stopped asking
We stopped asking children to behave. We build three rooms they want to be in, then we get out of the way.
Full-height flocked trees and snow deep enough to sit down in. Children run into this one. Most of them forget the camera is there in about ten seconds.
Warm light, brass, built wide enough that everyone fits in one frame. This is where the picture that gets printed comes from.
Real flour, real cookies, a kitchen built to be made a mess of. Small hands, sticky faces, nobody posing.
We designed and built all three. Nobody else shoots on them. On 6 December they come down.
What nobody tells you
A second outfit costs you a third of your session. Changing a child mid-shoot takes fifteen minutes of a thirty-minute booking, and the half that comes after is never as good as the half before.
So we ask for one outfit each. It sounds like a restriction. It is the single biggest thing you can do for your own gallery.
The good frame almost never arrives when everyone is looking. It arrives about four seconds later, when your son says something to his sister and you laugh before you have decided to.
That frame cannot be directed. It can only be waited for, which is the entire reason we shoot candid, and the reason we are not going to ask you to say cheese.
Last Christmas
This year is four weekends and around a hundred sessions. Then the sets come down and that is the season.
The sessions
30 minutes, two of the three sets. 25 previews, you choose 15, 15 edited images.
45 minutes, all three sets. 30 previews, you choose 20, 20 edited images.
30 minutes, one set. Baby is the one in the pictures and a parent stays throughout.
Tell us who is coming and we will come back with a price.
People means everyone being photographed, adults included. One small dog comes free.
When you get them
Previews within five days. You choose your favourites. The final gallery lands within five days of that.
Every gallery from every weekend is delivered before the school break on 14 December. That date is not a marketing line. It is the reason we shoot in November and not in the week everyone actually wants.
Dates and booking
Friday to Sunday. The last session is on 6 December.
Forty slots are held for families who were here last year. Which means the list is not a marketing device. It is the difference between choosing your weekend and taking what is left.
It costs nothing and it holds you to nothing.
Join the waiting listTwo days does not sound like much.
Ask anyone who wanted the 22nd last year.