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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

Yesterday we looked at choosing your location when taking photos of people, today we’re going to look at how to work with the people themselves to get the best out of your camera.

The Subject:

This is the hard part - Trying to get your subject to relax, look natural and, if they’re a tiny tearaway, getting them to put down the Tonka truck, stop splashing in the paddling pool or pretending they’re the neighbourhood’s local Jedi.

Children:
As I mentioned earlier, taking the photo in surroundings that match your subject is very important. If your grandchild is playing on the swings photograph him playing there. If they’re camera shy make a game of it and try to distract them. For example don’t tell them you are trying to take a photo of them, tell them you are trying to take a photo of the person that can swing the highest on the swings. That way you’re guaranteed a memorable action shot.

Adults:
Adults are easier because they don’t have so much of a desire to run rampant but they’re also harder because they are likely to be more conscious of being photographed.
I find it is definitely best to know your subject beforehand so that you can help them relax by talking to them about their interests. If it’s a relative this should be easy.
Start with a simple setup, place a chair perpendicular to your camera and then have your subject sit in the chair and turn their head, not their body, towards the camera. Clear and simple instructions like this will help your subject feel confident and not concerned about what they should be doing.

Take a few photos like this and explain the procedure is mainly to help you set up and check the lighting. At this stage you should tell them it doesn’t matter how they pose and you will end up with a good starting photo. Use your LCD screen and show them. The good start will help them relax.

From here on it’s up to you and your subject. Posing someone and at the same time helping them look natural is extremely hard. The best results will come naturally from a relaxed subject and a relaxed you! Whatever you do, don’t ’sneak’ shots. Your subject will likely be horrified you took a photo when they weren’t ready. As the shoot develops you’ll find the subject more relaxed and willing to mess around in front of the camera anyway, resulting in a more genuine end product.

Group Photos:
There are simple rules when taking group photos, and my suggestion, unless it’s a serious affair, is to break most of them.
Have the shortest people stand behind the tallest and then get them to try and be seen by jostling for a front spot.

Encourage people to go back to their school class portrait days and you’re guaranteed a great shot that you could look at all day, hunting for the rude gestures and tongue waggling in the crowd!

Make people jump! Jumping is great for a group photo, not least because you can use your digital camera to show the crowd who jumped last and encourage some competition for the next shot.

Tomorrow part 3 of  ‘Taking Photographs Guide: The Portrait’ will focus on setting up your camera.

Portraits are always important, whether they’re serious, professional records or just that close up holiday snap, they always serve to capture a memory. Sometimes the moment itself is enough to make the portrait powerful but those moments can equally be missed if you’re not fully prepared. This week’s guide is designed to help you make the most of those moments, be they impromptu or posed.

The first part of the portrait tutorial will focus on what to keep in mind when choosing a location.

Choosing your location

It may be that you’re out and about, or that you’re somewhere where you can carefully pick your scene. Either way you can still maintain a lot of control when taking a photo with just a bit of awareness.

The Eyes:

Throughout this guide my discussion will be relating to illuminating the eyes as much as possible. The eyes are the first part of the face that someone is drawn to when viewing a portrait and for that reason they are the most important aspect of a portrait photo.

When focusing, it is sensible to focus on the nearest eye to you. Having sharp focus on the eye allows the viewer to connect with the image immediately and then explore the finer details afterwards.

Lighting:

Outdoor:

The sun will feature if you’re outside and can be extremely harsh as a directional light, however, it can also serve as a great ‘fill’ light as it reflects. Look for large white walls that you could use to capture some of that light as it bounces back onto your subject. A great tip, and something currently very popular with photographers, is to use the sun as a backlight, behind your subject, and then reflect that same light onto the front of them. You can do this using the white wall I mentioned or by using a conventional reflector. Alternatively you can have some fun by making your own reflector. The fun and interesting results of photography are always unlocked by messing around and getting thoroughly involved in your work so why not get a large board, something like a dinner tray, and cover it in silver foil. Take it outside and see how you can bounce sunlight back onto your subject. Be careful in full daylight as it can be extremely bright!

The result of such a photo is that your subject has a brilliant bright rim light from the sun as well as a more diffuse, but natural, light on the face, with a lot of light bouncing around in the eyes to illuminate and reveal the iris.

• The below photo is taken at 3pm on a summer day with a reflector bouncing the sun, which is behind the subject, back onto her face.

Indoor:

If you’re inside try and work near a window. Not only do they reflect brilliantly in people’s eyes, which offers more of an interesting ’story’ behind the photo, they can also be used with curtains to great effect.

The intention when working near a window is to be able to see its reflection in your subject’s eyes so have them facing the window, or just to the side of it. If you have the window behind your subject you will get 1 of 2 things:

- A ‘blown’ background - This is where the sky goes pure white as it overexposes because your foreground is dark.
- A dark subject - This is because your camera is trying to get the best general exposure and is trying to account for the bright sky.

• The above shot was taken using just a conservatory skylight for illumination.

Again, feel free to try and reflect some of the light back at the other side of your subject. The dynamic use of light will create more interesting shadows and highlights, which reveals form and makes for a more interesting and intriguing photo.

When it’s next winter, or if you’re planning a chilly holiday, look for snow. Snow is a perfect natural reflector and provides really brilliant, clean light to a subject.

• The below photo was taken with a flash pointed directly at the snow.

Overall lighting:

Experiment with your light source. Get yourself a patient subject. It doesn’t even have to be a person. Take a series of photos with the model at different angles to your light source and see what direction best reveals the subject’s eyes and their features. In general a light source that is directly on the camera’s own plane, such as a built-in flash, will give the least interesting results. Shadows give form to features and make things much more interesting.

Tomorrow part 2 of  ‘Taking Photographs Guide: The Portrait’ will focus on how to work with your subject.