Credit: Syda_Productions
The holidays are a special time of year and lots of families want to remember those moments by taking pictures. Over the past few years, there have been so many improvements to technology and cameras that it is easier than ever to be your own photographer. But have you ever wondered why your pictures might not be turning out as well as the ones you see on blogs or from professional photographers (who sometimes are now even using a lower grade camera than their clients, but taking higher quality pictures)?
Here are a few tricks that will change the way that you take your holiday photos:
- Pay attention to the light: When I am shooting a picture of my kids that is just for us and not for the blog, sometimes I just want to capture a moment for posterity and it is very easy to forget to pay attention to where I am standing. I have a bad habit of standing in my own light and casting dark shadows over the entire picture. Or sometimes I will not pay attention to the light source and get a glare from a window or a light and overshadow my subject. There’s a place for that, if it’s a style choice you are making on purpose, but it’s usually not what I’m going for. This can usually be fixed by just moving to the other side of the person you are trying to shoot. You can see what I mean in these two pictures of Nicholas. They were taken just about a minute apart, but I personally prefer the lighting in the one on the right. All the photographer did (I can’t remember if it was my husband or me) was move to the other side of him.
- Bounce or diffuse your flash. Chances are you might be waking up before the sun with some very excited kidlets on Christmas morning. If you want to take pictures in the dark, you are going to need to use the flash on your camera. It’s okay. The flash on your camera is not evil, like some articles or blog posts just like this one might have led you to believe. If there was no use for it, then they wouldn’t put it there. Although, if you just use it as it is and point it straight at your subject, it might look pretty bad. This year do me a favor and try something new. Pick up a piece of white tissue paper from one of the Christmas presents and hold it in front of your flash. You can also hold a piece of tin foil or white paper in front of your flash at an angle. This takes a little bit of practice, but makes a huge difference once you get the hang of it. There are special diffusers you can buy, like this one through my Amazon affiliate link: TopOne Universal Cloud, but honestly the average parent is probably fine just using a piece of paper. Here’s an example photo (taken with a cell phone) of how to hold the paper up to your camera’s flash.
- Don’t listen to your camera. If you are taking pictures of something like Christmas lights, then your camera is going to think it is weird and there probably will not be a perfect setting for what you want to do, especially if you also want to have moving kids in your pictures. Your camera might even try to warn you that the balance of certain colors is off. Of course it is off, you are trying to take pictures of flashing neon. You are smarter than the technology. You know what you want. Just ignore your camera’s advice in this case. You may have to do some experimenting before you find the settings that work well for you. If you want to take pictures of your Christmas tree at night, visit Beth’s post over at Unskinny Boppy to see how she got her gorgeous Christmas photos and made her camera work for her by ignoring its advice.
- Get a tripod. This is the affiliate link to the one I have: Ravelli . If you need your shutter speed to be very slow because you want to get a certain effect, like making the lights on your Christmas tree give off a glow like stars, then a tripod is a necessity. There will always be human error from your hands shaking (even if you don’t notice it it is there) that can be eliminated when you are using a tripod. Eddie showed my readers how to get the star effect in this post:
- Don’t stress too much over perfection. Sometimes we can spend so much time and energy trying to pose everyone for the perfect holiday photo that we just wind up stressing everyone out. Usually the best, most memorable shots are the candid ones that the kids didn’t even realize were being taken.
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