Have a quality Christmas – in pictures

Eliott, nine, goes to a camera club at school each week and is a budding photographer interested in still life shots of his Lego creations and action figures. He makes video reviews using a digital camera for his Lego blog and helps his mum, Jo, with photography for her fashion and parenting blog. “You can’t have a good blog if you don’t try hard to take cool photos,” Eliott says.
Photograph: Matt Swan

For the challenge, Eliott experimented with a Nikon 10-megapixel COOLPIX S31 camera, using it at camera club and at home. “If you want to make a video you just push one button,” he says. “And you can add fun effects to photos quite easily – I took quite a few pictures of my friends and added a funky border.” Jo took this photo of Eliott using the family’s Canon EOS 1100D.
Photograph: Johanna Swan

Matthew is used to taking photos of Jo and Eliott for Jo’s blog, Fashion Detective, and he enjoyed playing with the light during this trip to the local park: “We usually take photos for the blog on bright sunny days. Sometimes it gets a bit bleachy so I’ve used the challenge as an excuse to take photos under cloudy skies and fading light.” Jo is holding the camera she experimented with during the challenge, a Fujifilm Instax Mini 8.
Photograph: Matt Swan

“Capturing our family life is important to us, whether it’s for Jo or Eliott’s blog or just for posterity,” Matthew says. He took this shot of his wife and son having fun on the swings using a Pentax K500 digital SLR camera. Designed to make digital SLR photography easy for amateurs it also comes with an adaptor that allows you to power the camera with alkaline batteries when you’re on the go.
Photograph: Matt Swan

“We usually take photos for my blog when we’re out and about,” Jo says, “but on this occasion we decided to set up a studio-style shoot using the plain white walls in our bedroom as a backdrop, so the focus is more on the vintage dress and trilby hat I’m wearing. Matthew took this with the Pentax and we tinkered with various lights and reflectors to get the soft, retro effect we were after.” Photograph: Matt Swan

The Swan family house is full of retro pieces, particularly from the 1960s, and while Jo was taking photos of this old-fashioned, mod-style phone with her Instax camera, Matt decided to grab a digital shot: “We’re obsessed with the sixties,” Jo explains, “and I love how bright and funky our old phone looks here.” Photograph: Matt Swan

“A good fashion blog is all about the details,” Jo says. “I’m always pestering Matt to take photos of my accessories or my shoes and I love the way he has made this shot look so natural, in spite of the crazy combination of sky-blue heels and lace tights I’m wearing. I didn’t even notice how well my antique ring matched the shoes until I saw this shot.” Photograph: Matt Swan

Matthew, Jo and Eliott love to travel and during the challenge they spent a day in Liverpool, taking photos in the hip Ropewalks area of the city. “I had Jo walking up and down the street in front of this graffiti-covered door for about 10 minutes to get the shot I wanted,” Matthew explains. “I loved the contrast of her girly dress against the gritty industrial backdrop.” Photograph: Matt Swan

“I managed to get the camera off auto and focus in manually on the beans Matthew was picking for this shot,” says Jo. “We moved into our house in May and it’s the first time we’ve had a garden in 10 years. I can’t believe we’ve grown something edible successfully - we don’t have a very good record, even with the most straightforward house plants.” Photograph: Johanna Swan

“We used two cameras to achieve this vintage fashion mood board,” Jo says, “our Canon and the Instax. The instant photography took a while to get used to: you only get one shot, so you need to be confident about the image you’re creating every time you push the button. We tried to tell little stories within small sets of photos, and then put them all together to create a vintage effect. I love how retro they ended up looking, without using any digital filters.”
Photograph: Greg Funnell/MattSwan/Guardian

Eliott is most proud of this photo he took with the Nikon COOLPIX S31 during his toy review challenge. “I took the toys out into the garden so the light would be better,” he says. “Then I kept really still while I was taking the shot. I arranged the toys so it looks like Iron Man is having a battle with himself.” Photograph: Eliot Swan