How to take a better holiday picture of your kids…
It’s not the camera. It’s the photographer.
Kids are tough to get good pictures of….they don’t sit still….they don’t smile when you ask….and when they do smile, most point and shoot cameras are not fast enough to focus, charge the flash and take the picture in time to capture the moment. But all is not lost.
The most important thing you can do when photographing any person, but especially kids, is to get in close. People like looking at photographs of other people’s faces…its just something about us humans. So get in close and make sure you get your subject to take up a lot of the frame. You can zoom your camera to get closer, or physically move closer. Either way, close is better.
Next up is the angle of view. Most adults stand 5 or 6 feet tall. Most kids are much shorter. When adults snap pictures of their kids, they usually get shots like the one below which makes kids look small and the subject look unengadged in the picture.
Instead, get down to their level. Yes, sit down or crouch or lay down on your belly for really small babies. Now you are operating in their space and you see what they would see if they were to take a picture of a child. It works a lot better as shown in the image below which is very similar to the one above, but more visually pleasing.
In my next post, I will add in some suggestions on how to “capture the moment” by speeding up just about any point and shoot camera.
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Another useful hint: don’t force any kid to stand still and smile for 15 minutes while you argue about 5-stops. My maternal grandparents did this often, and I’m still scarred — I can’t stand to pose for pictures, at all.
It may sound like an obvious hint, but I’ve seen it in many other families since.
also — Fill the frame — Shot 1 — is a bullseye — the child head is smack in the middle — way too much above the top that is uninteresting –
Shot 2 — Bullseye in middle of neck — subject fills frame — the picture is so much better…..