Christmas is the perfect time to hone your photography skills. It’s a time full of colours, events, meals and parties, which are all excellent subjects for your photographs. There will be lots of people and lots going on, so you might even want to use some of your more successful images in your events photography portfolio to show your clients what you’re capable of.

You’ll be presented with some ideal opportunities to capture images of people during the Christmas period, so your portrait skills should see some distinct improvements. Spend some time beforehand thinking about the techniques you’re going to use so that you’re ready to capture the best images possible. Are you going to use flash? Will there be lots of children present who you’ll want to capture using motion photography? Which areas of the room will you use for your backgrounds?

Don’t just focus in on the people – Christmas is also a good opportunity to take photographs of beautiful scenery, food and other general subjects. There will be lots of different colours to play around with, offered up by Christmas trees, lights, decorations, accessories, gifts and people’s outfits. Choose the subjects which appeal most strongly to you and you should be able to capture some beautiful, striking images which will also bring back wonderful memories for you.