How to take the best family photos
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 by Jon
Family Photos
Be Natural!
Children only sit down to eat food and even then you could do with some superglue on the chair, so don’t make them sit down or do anything they wouldn’t want to. The best way to capture children is in their element – playing! For that reason have some props like bubbles or a favourite football at the ready
The kids Are in Charge!
If you want to capture your child’s attention you’re going to have to let them take you down a peg or two. There are some great perspective tricks you can use to do this such as getting the adult to stand in the distance and lining up your perspective with the horizon so that the child looks bigger than the parent. After one attempt at this, be sure to show the kids the result and they’ll be churning out hundreds of similar ideas begging you to photo them holding a tiny version of Mum in their hands.
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The above photo is courtesy of Bazoomba_lol on Flickr.
The Whole Family!
Photographs of the whole family this summer will look best when you’re out and about. That’s great because it means you don’t have to worry about lighting. With this in mind use your portrait mode setting on your camera and turn your flash off. Without flash you can really capture the lighting of your surroundings. Take a slightly wider photo so that the location your family are in is obvious. That will make for a much more memorable photo when you look back in years to come.
Once you’ve managed to herd your whole family together, the adults have stopped gossiping and the kids have paused, but briefly, from their mud-slinging competition, you’ve got to make the most of it. Have a joke lined up to make everyone relax. If it is a light hearted comment about someone in the group it will be great as you can press the trigger when everyone looks round and laughs together. Much better than a static ‘all eyes forward’ photo that doesn’t tell much of a story!
About Turn!
Usually when you think of photographing the family you think of what they look like, their faces. Try turning this idea around, literally. Instead of photographing them straight on get them looking at something. If your troopers have spent the day fortifying your beach position with sand castles and moats, make their creation your subject and photograph over your children’s shoulders as they look at what they’ve made. Photographing like this will capture their emotion more than just a normal forward facing head shot and helps to give context which, once again, means the pics will be far more fun to look back at in the future.
The Right Stuff!
Tripod: Almost all digital cameras have a built in timer setting. With a handy Gorilla Pod you can rest your camera, put it on a timer and get yourself in the family portrait too.
Camera: All modern digital compact and SLR cameras will handle portrait photography well in brightly lit situations. Some cameras, such as the Fujifilm Finepix Z10FD come with face detection which help to focus quickly on a tricky subject such as an active child.
The Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ7 is a great compact choice. It has HD video recording for when one frame is not enough to capture all the action. It also has a 25mm wide angle lens, great for capturing the whole family, and a powerful 12x optical zoom making it just as versatile for distant photos.
The Sony Alpha 350 is a brilliant entry level DSLR, and with the 18-70mm lens provided it’s great for documenting a whole family holiday. It helps that it’s extremely well priced too!
A full range of cameras with Face Recognition can be viewed here
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