I need to create some portraits with extra cheese!

Dubious Drewski · Dec 14, 2008

Maybe you guys can help. Two friends of mine want to send their friends and family photo Christmas cards this year. Sounds normal, except they want to do it in the style of cheesy, awful 80's Christmas family portraits. I am happy to accept the challenge, but I'd like to see what you guys could suggest for lighting/prop details.

Surprisingly, it's been excruciatingly hard to find samples of cheesy portraits online. But I have already envisioned red and green knitted sweaters, corny Christmas themed background, a small prop or two, like a miniature Christmas tree or oversized candy cane and maybe a pose along the lines of John C Reilly and Will Ferrel:

I am also going to process the image in a way that makes it look straight out of the 80s.

Any suggestions though?

reg · Dec 14, 2008

Most of it's gonna be in the hair and outfits, but I don't have much to offer past that, good luck!

Josh66 · Dec 14, 2008

...can't help, but I'm looking forward to seeing the results.

JerryPH · Dec 14, 2008

60's style portrait links

70's style portrait links

80's style portrait links

Google was my friend.

Dubious Drewski · Dec 14, 2008

Thanks for the contribution Jerry, but if you peruse the links you provided, you'll see that none of the images you'll find are along the lines of 'Cheesy posed family photos'. And I didn't even see one photo that looked remotely authentic. Did you? I am hoping to create a photo that has such a strong, awful style that anyone who looks at can't help but laugh and/or be appalled.

I know what I will do to make this portrait work, but I'm definitely disappointed that google hasn't been so helpful.

rufus5150 · Dec 14, 2008

Try this: http://listoftheday.blogspot.com/2007/09/great-olan-mills-photos.html

but that may go way too far on the cheese. I found that (though I'd seen it before) by googling 'olan mills horror stories'.

Dubious Drewski · Dec 14, 2008

You cannot go too far with cheese. Thanks, some of those are just great. Soft focus, pastels, denim, stupid props, oh it's so wonderful! I've forwarded that to my friend. We'll see what he thinks of it.

iflynething · Dec 14, 2008

rufus5150 said:
Try this: http://listoftheday.blogspot.com/2007/09/great-olan-mills-photos.html

but that may go way too far on the cheese. I found that (though I'd seen it before) by googling 'olan mills horror stories'.

I got a 20 that says he drives a Camaro. Great!

~Michael~

chrisburke · Dec 14, 2008

this is my buddies from Sunday Night Cruise.. this has extra chesse, with Cheese on the top

JerryPH · Dec 15, 2008

Dubious Drewski said:
Thanks for the contribution Jerry, but if you peruse the links you provided, you'll see that none of the images you'll find are along the lines of 'Cheesy posed family photos'. And I didn't even see one photo that looked remotely authentic. Did you? I am hoping to create a photo that has such a strong, awful style that anyone who looks at can't help but laugh and/or be appalled.

I spent a good 45 min going through about 200 of those links. Seems your definition of cheese is of a higher standard than mine, becuase I often cracked up or just clicked to the next one becuase it was literally AWFUL... lol

Dubious Drewski · Dec 16, 2008

Alright. I think I got some usable shots here. Some are better quality than others. All of them are equally bemusing. The colours on some were splotched to give it a low-quality, oldschool photo look.

1. The Aspiring photographer:

2. Happy roommates:

3. The wonderful electronic telephone!

4. Oh, it's you!

5. This has left me feeling unfulfilled.

What do you think, guys? Got any criticism for me? Remember though that they are supposed to look corny and somewhat eighties(excluding this last one here, which is just supposed to look weird).