Here at the Sweet Shoppe, we’re spending each month of 2024 with a Baker’s Dozen of photo prompts to ensure we’re being purposeful about recording this sweet life we live. So here are thirteen new prompts to inspire your photography in the coming month.

A Little Inspiration…

Here’s a few ideas from my camera to help you get started.

Gathering

November is a month when many people begin gathering with family and friends to celebrate holidays like an American Thanksgiving or Friendsgiving. This is an ideal time to capture an image of your entire group… and make sure you’re in the photo, too! With the help of a tripod and a remote trigger or even the time-delay setting on your camera, you can easily appear in images like this.

If you’ve got a group that’s a little wild – especially if there are small children or pets involved – your stress level will drop if you stop trying to capture a “perfect” image. Instead, prompt your group to make silly faces – or if the kids are crying, have the adults pretend to cry as well. You’ll wind up with a photo that’s guaranteed to make you laugh.

In the Kitchen

One of the things we do a lot this time of year is eat… which also means a lot of time preparing or procuring food. Be sure to bring your camera into the kitchen and capture a couple behind-the-scenes images. You can place your camera on a tripod and set it to take a series of time-delayed images as you work; alternatively you can focus your shoot on a still-life of the ingredients you’re preparing. (This is a great time to use the wide-angle lens on your camera!)

I love this image I shot midway through my work to make a fruit salad for my family because it also captured one of my dogs in her perennial position at my feet, hoping and waiting for a piece of fruit to fall and provide her a sweet snack.

On My Plate

Since so much of the month focuses on food, be sure to capture an image of the food on your plate. What does your Thanksgiving meal look like? Is it turkey and mashed potatoes, like my family, or ham and sweet potatoes, like my husband’s?

If you want something other than a top-down shot of your meal, try shooting from different angles.

After the Meal

What happens at your home after a big meal? At my in-laws, as soon as the table is cleared and the dishes are done, the games come out. Use your phone to capture sneaky shots of your hand at dominos or cards, and keep it handy to photograph reactions from the other players as the game starts getting competitive.

Anyone not gathered around the table is probably indulging in a post-feast nap. Be sure to grab your camera and tiptoe into the living room – you’ll find opportunities for sweet images like this one of my nephew and brother-in-law:

Natural Light

Between the time change, the natural shortening of daylight in the northern hemisphere, and skies that are often heavy with clouds, the month of November provides some of the best opportunities for natural light photography.

“Natural light” simply means you didn’t use a flash and instead relied on sunlight to create your photograph.

Experimenting with natural light photography is especially handy when the weather is awful outside and everyone is stuck in the house. Place your subject beside a window so the light falls on the front and side of their face. If you’re shooting with a DSLR or mirrorless camera – or one that allows you to control your exposure settings – you’ll want to change your aperture (also called f-stop) to the lowest number your lens supports. We call this “shooting wide-open” as the diaphragm that sits between your lens and the mirror or image sensor will open as wide as it possibly can to let in as much light as possible. You will also likely need to raise your ISO to 400 or 800; since the light you’re using to shoot is softer and diffused as it comes through the window, the image sensor will need to be set to a higher sensitivity.

This image of my husband cuddling with our granddaughter isn’t technically perfect (her eyes are in focus, but his face isn’t, and the movement of her hand caused it to blur) but I still treasure this photograph. I was able to capture the sweet smile on her face and his tender expression as he basks in a cuddle, and it makes my heart melt. (They were sitting on the floor of our living room, positioned with a wall of windows to the left.)

Something I’m Grateful For

Because of Thanksgiving, November is a month many of us focus on the concept of gratitude. What are you grateful for? And how could you capture it in a photograph?

This image is intensely personal for me, and might be a little confusing at first glance. Angie is grateful for Santa Claus? No – this is actually a photograph of my parents.

When my Dad retired from the Army in 2004 after 30 years of having to be clean-shaven, he hung up his razor and grew out a beard that came in nearly white. That was the first Christmas he was asked to play Santa for a school’s fundraising “Breakfast with Santa”. Here we are, two decades later, and I am intensely grateful – grateful for my parents’ good health, for the fact I get to be a part of their Santa work … from photographing them and doing their business’ graphic design, to managing their website, to writing and photographing and designing a children’s book, to visiting a Reindeer Ranch, to sewing my mother’s new Mrs. Claus costume and even making a matching dress for their dog, Lani … I am grateful for the memories we’ve created and the way it’s deepened my relationship with them as an adult.

I can’t wait to see what you’re grateful for and how you photograph it this month!

Hands

I absolutely love photographs of hands! “The best hand photography,” as they said in this article on MasterClass, “can lend point-of-view relatability to an image, reveal personality, or tell a story,” all without showing the subject’s face. As November is often a month when we gather with family, it’s a prime opportunity for you to capture the wrinkled, gnarled hands of a grandparent alongside the soft, chubby hands of a toddler.

My husband was chopping wood for my in-laws when his father came out to help. I love this image of their hands doing manual labor together.

When my brother and sister-in-law marked their 15th wedding anniversary, I captured this image of their hands. I placed a small table in front of a window (for natural light), draped a piece of black velvet fabric across the table, and positioned their hands about 2 feet above the table. With the soft light coming through the window, and the help of my 60mm macro lens, I was able to create a unique anniversary portrait for them:

Blue Jeans or Denim

This month’s color/texture prompt is the ubiquitous denim, most often found in blue jeans, but also seen in shorts, skirts, and jackets, as well as handbags and backpacks. Where will you spot this fabric this month? What kind of image can you create when you focus on denim?

It’s On My List

Our final prompt for the month of November provides the perfect transition into the Christmas season. Whether you’re a Black Friday shopper or a Cyber Monday one, you’re sure to have a list of people for whom you’re purchasing gifts. What is on your list this year?

I was so taken aback by this delivery of my Amazon purchases I couldn’t resist grabbing my camera to record the results of my online shopping. I love that I can get all my Christmas shopping done in my pajamas, but my poor Amazon driver definitely gets a workout!

Join us (you could win a free kit!)

I hope you’ll play along with this month’s Baker’s Dozen of photo challenges. Remember, it’s all about being more purposeful about our photography and capturing more images in 2024. As always, I encourage you to share them where you feel comfortable doing so. If you post them on social media, use the hashtag #ssdphotochallenge – and when you scrapbook them, be sure to share your completed layout with us in the Gallery.

We’ve also set up a thread in the SSD Challenges forum for everyone to share their images – and as a bonus, for each photo you post, your name will go in a drawing and one person will win their choice of a kit or template trio or quad from the Shoppe! Congratulations to leablahblah aka Lea, our winner for the month of October.

Who will be next to win their choice of goodie from the Shoppe? It could be you when you join us in the forum in this thread for November and start sharing your Baker’s Dozen images now. I’ll see you there!