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  4.50 (Worth a try) from 28 votes (1065 Visits) |
At the moment, I'm waiting for about a thousand wedding photos to download onto our computer from last night's wedding. My wife and I are photographers. It's not Kelly's day job, so she's a bit more specialized, leaning heavily towards wedding photography. I am much more of an all-around photographer, with experience in sports (primarily hockey), landscape, portrait, underwater and wedding photography. Simply put, photography is my life. I cannot turn off the viewfinder in my head, and am rarely more than arm's-length away from a camera. All of us want to take great photos of our kids...to show off to grandparents and coworkers, to hang on the fridge, to stick in the family album. But what kind of photo makes the leap from snapshot to art? How can you take a photo that is worthy of being framed and hung on the wall? Here are a few semi-random tips and tricks... POSING & SETTING UP
- Don't center everything. One of the first defining characteristics of a snapshot is that the subject is perfectly centered in the frame. Don't be afraid to crop a photo in really tight to accentuate a great expression or put your subject off in one corner of the frame (for example, if you're going for a walk on the beach, get some of the beach and water in the frame, fercryinoutloud). Just the other day I had a call at the studio from a parent whose baby I photographed a couple months ago. She was just calling to tell me that she was so grateful I spent fifteen minutes talking her into going with an incredibly tight crop for one of her photos. She'd had more comments about that photo than any other photo of her child. She thought an 8x10 of just the baby's face was too much, too big, too close. I've got the closeup of my daugter done as a 16x20 in our entryway. You can never get too close on a closeup.
- Get down to your child's level. We see our kids from the top down every day of our lives and theirs. By getting down to your child's level, you change the perspective of the photo and even a simple photo can become totally different.
- Watch your backgrounds. Clutter in the background of a photo is just that...clutter. It draws the eye away from the subject. Take your kids to a park, hang a sheet from the ceiling, or at least pick up all their toys before you try to take a non-snapshot-ish photo.
- They don't always have to be looking at the camera, and they don't always have to be smiling! I almost cry sometimes when I'm showing parents an absolutely spectacular photo and the parent says, "Oh I don't want that one...little Jimmy isn't looking at the camera," or, "...but little Susie isn't smiling." You want to see your kid smile, tickle them. You want a gorgeous photo, don't worry about it!
TECHNICAL STUFF
- If your digital camera has a 'digital zoom', don't use it. All that's doing is cropping the image in-camera and lowering your image quality.
- Shoot on the highest resolution your camera will allow. With 1Gb memory cards for less than $50 and 500Gb hard drives under $200, there's no reason to shoot tiny photos!
- Megapixels are important, but having the latest and greatest camera isn't the most important concern. Professionally, we shoot camera systems that cost around $10,000, the best photo I've personally ever taken in my life was shot with a $15 point-and-shoot film camera. For years we shot weddings with a 6-megapixel Canon Digital Rebel. Having good technique and timing is much more important than having a fancy camera system.
- Do NOT make a print of your digital photo and then delete the file. Most prints that come out of your home printer only have a lifetime of around 5 to 10 years. A print made by a professional lab has a lifetime of around 25 years. Don't assume that because you made a print, you don't need the digital file.
- Get some editing software! You don't need to spend $600 on the latest and greatest version of Photoshop. If you go to everybody's favorite search engine that rhymes with noodle, you can download a program called Picasa for free. The software is a cataloging and organization program, as well as a basic image editing program. It's awesome. There are plenty of others out there at prices anywhere from $30 to $130 that have almost as much functionality as the very high end programs, with ease of use that won't have you going to a class to figure it out.
- Those little built-in flashes can work okay...sometimes. You're likely to end up with very flat lighting (no shadows...snapshot!) with glaring 'hotspots'. If you're more than a few feet away, you'll probably have glowing red demon-eyes as well (which can be fixed with programs like Picasa). Personally, I'd rather go outside or open the blinds and turn the flash off. Natural light is your friend! Use the on-camera flash as a 'fill-flash'...to fill in overly dark areas (under the eyes, etc.) and banish shadows.
- If you photograph your child's sporting event, plan to take control of your camera. In order to freeze action, you need a fast shutter speed. Most digital cameras, even point-and-shoot models, have settings that allow you to control the shutter speed. It may be a 'sports' setting, or it may be buried in a menu option, but to shoot, say a soccer game, you should have a shutter speed around 1/200 sec or faster. As it gets dark (or indoors), this gets vastly more difficult (photography relies on light, and when you run out of light, you can't open the shutter for 1/200 of a second and expect to get a lot of light on the sensor).
OTHER STUFF
- Sunlight is your enemy. Bright sun is hell on film and image sensors alike...they just don't know what to do with it. Bright overcast or shady areas are much nicer for photography.
- If it's junk, don't keep it. I don't know where this tendancy comes from...the ease of using digital, a throwback to the old days of film when we had to keep every photo, or what, but if you've got an image that is so blurry or out of focus you can't tell if it's a child or an orangutan, don't be afraid of the delete key.
More of our work can be seen at our website, Whiteshark Photography, and on our blog. |
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4.50 (Worth a try) from 28 votes |
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 Related keywords: camera, closeup, crop, flash, flashes, megapixel, megapixels, photo, photograph, photography, point-and-shoot, portrait, shutter, snapshot, zoom
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