Although I really enjoy hiring a photographer to commemorate special occasions with professional photos as described in my previous post, I also really enjoy doing birthday photo shoots with friends either with birthday decorations we setup or using vignettes from my birthday celebration venue.
In 2021, I celebrated my birthday with friends at the Gingerbread Mansion in Ferndale, a fabulous location with themed rooms, afternoon high tea, and homemade breakfast on-site. I brought a bunch of birthday decor and as a special treat they provided balloons, flowers, chocolate, wine, and a card for my birthday celebration. Some of my favorite birthday photos come from taking artsy shots sipping that wine in their beautiful clawfoot bathtub (as you may have seen featured on my about me page).
To set up this photo shoot, I used a bunch of party decorations from Amazon including vertical banners, strung horizontal banners, balloons, a metallic garland, and Photo Booth props on sticks. Each area of the room was a different vignette for photos and additionally we used the gifts from the hotel, such as the flowers and wine, as additional props. We each took turns photographing each other at each of the photo backdrops.
This year, we did a riff on this photo shoot idea using the very maximalist decor of the Madonna Inn as our backdrop during our girls birthday weekend in SLO celebration. The Madonna Inn lower level near a small gift gift shop and the restrooms, had some beautiful set design, including an arch made from metal flowers, a stone arch with barrels, a wine themed area with grapes, a colorful staircase, and a singin’ in the rain style lamppost. We had so much fun taking memorable photos in each of these impromptu Photo Booth locations in our matching Madonna Inn pink ensembles.
As we did the photos we gave each other fun and humorous posing suggestions like “be a ballerina,” “eat the grapes,” “walk down the staircase,” which lead to a lot of laughs, smiles, and great pictures!
These photos (both from 2021 and 2023) are some of my favorites of me and my friends (not to mention fabulous profile photo candidates!), and I love looking back on them as incredible memories and beautiful works of art. Cheers to celebrating birthdays and capturing moments of joy in fabulous photos!
Millennial's Delight 