December in Goa is the most photogenic month of the year. The light is cooler and cleaner than the monsoon haze. The city fills with people. And for luxury hotels, it’s the month that defines the year — the Christmas and New Year season is when reputations are made and bookings are secured for the following twelve months.
When we photographed the Taj Hotels’ Christmas installation for 2023, the brief was clear: capture the decorations, the atmosphere, and the experience in a way that would work across print, digital, and social media. That’s three very different things.
For print, you need large, flawless, well-lit compositions that will hold up at A3 and beyond. For digital, you need clean crops that communicate quickly at small sizes. For social media, you need the aspirational hero shot, the close detail, and the candid atmosphere. A single shoot needs to produce all of these.
The Taj installation that year was elaborate — large-format floral arrangements, warm lighting throughout the public spaces, a centrepiece tree in the main lobby that required a wide-angle lens and a tilt-shift to get the full structure without distortion. We spent six hours in the property across two visits: one in the evening to capture the warm, ambient light of the installation, and one in the early morning to get the clean, desaturated look of the decorations against daylight.
The lesson from festive photography — and from hospitality photography generally — is that the light you find is rarely the light you need. Hotel lobbies are lit for human comfort, not for photography. Our approach is to turn off or dim as many of the ceiling lights as possible and replace them with our own sources that we can control.
If you’re planning a festive campaign, talk to us early. December shoots book out by October. Get in touch here.
Further reading: festive season in India.
