Baby Proofing Your Photo Session

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What can parents do to help an infant session go smoothly?

alphabet-blocksProbably the number one thing that can make a baby shoot work well is to make sure your little one is well rested and has a full belly.  It’s hard to capture the innocence of a sleeping baby or their angelic smile when they are tired and hungry, i.e. fussing and crying.  The same goes for adults, I know it’s difficult to get a smile out of ME when I am tried and hungry!

It’s also very important for the parents to be calm and happy.  If your flustered because you are running late, or stressed about time and getting the perfect photo…your baby will feel your tension and will also be stressed.  Relaxed parents = a relaxed baby (usually).

It’s a good idea to double check your diaper bag to make sure you have items such as: wipes, extra diapers, burp cloths, lotion, spare clothes, blankets, etc.  Putting lotion on your baby just before the shoot, paying special attention to any dry patches can really help with the quality of the images.  And to be honest will save me a lot of time editing out little dry skin flakes so I can get your images back to you as soon as possible.

It is essential to have extra clothes and blankets.  It’s just a fact: babies have stuff coming out of them all the time!  They won’t stop just for a photo shoot.  ;o)  For that matter, bring extra clothes for YOU!  Try to avoid clothes with loud patterns or big logos…this distracts and takes away from that precious face. Earth tones and pastels are good colors. Bright yellows, oranges, and reds are distracting and often give your kiddos skin a strange tint.

Bring your favorite baby toys for them to play with. Bring toys that get their attention. Bring that special blanket that Grandma made them, or their favorite bear.  Bring any other props you would like to use, such as a basket, or something for them to lean on or ride.

Most importantly, as with any photo shoot….have fun! 

Help everyone out! We would love to hear your ideas, as well as your stories from past photo shoots with babies and children in the comments section below.

Never take your camera out of Automatic mode!

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If you want all your pictures to look exactly the same, never take your camera out of auto mode. Do you have photos where the person is in focus, but so is everything else, like the pole sticking out of their head or the trashcan in the background? How about the photo at the party where everything is dark except the person in the middle with shiny white blotches all over him from the flash? So how do you solve this?

You don’t have to be scared to take you camera out of auto, it’s digital! One of the greatest things about digital photography is that it doesn’t cost anything to to develop your images. You could mess up a thousand shots and you’ll never lose anything except maybe a moment or two. Just a little bit of experimentation will really improve your photography!

Take your camera out of auto and use the scene modes! You don’t have to put your camera in manual and flip and twist dials every shot to get better images. You’ve always wondered what those modes were for right? Well your about to know. Even most of the new smart phone cameras have these modes.

Scene mode iconsPortrait Mode – Did you ever see a photo where the subject was in focus and the back ground was soft and blurry and wish you could do that? This is your mode! In this mode the camera will open the aperture all the way (smaller number i.e. f2.8) giving you a shallow focus depth which means an in focus subject and a blurry background. The closer you are to your subject the better this mode works. You may also get a flash in this mode, even on bright sunny day. This is fill flash and helps get rid of those harsh shadows under the eyes so you don’t end up with raccoons for subjects.

Night Portrait Mode – This is similar to portrait mode but will always use the flash and will “drag the shutter” meaning the shutter stays open a bit longer. Aside from just portraits you can get some cool effects with this. With the quick flash you can get a main subject in focus but you can move the camera as you take the photo and get some ghosting effects, or light trails.

Sports Mode – or Action mode. This is great for sports, kids, pets, cars, or anything that is moving. The camera uses a fast shutter speed to attempt to freeze the action. Keep in mind you need sufficient light to use a fast shutter speed. You won’t be able to use this in the club to freeze action on the dance floor, there just isn’t enough light. You can also pan the camera to follow your subject and increase your chance of getting a sharp picture. Panning take some practice but you can get some really cool shots doing this.

Landscape Mode – This is pretty much the opposite of portrait mode. You use this if you want to get everything in focus such as an expansive landscape with foreground and background object that you want sharp. In this mode the shutter speed may be slow which would make it difficult to capture a sharp image, you might want to use a tripod or other stabilizing element, like a rock.

 

For another great, and more in depth article check out Digital Photography School.

How do I get a soft, blurry background in my photos?

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Something that can really make a photo exceptional is a very clear subject with no distractions. Have you ever taken a picture of your kid at just the right moment to capture that perfect look, only to later upload the picture and all you see if the telephone pole growing out of their head and all the clutter in the picture?

There are a couple of things you can do about this. One is simply be mindful of what is filling the frame. A great photo is made just as much by what is NOT in the image, as what is in it. This isn’t always easy to to do, especially if your trying to capture a shot of your 100mph toddler.

Another thing you can do is blur the background by controlling your Depth of Field. You do this by shooting with a wide open aperture. This gives you less range of focus, or more blur. With higher end cameras you can shoot in “Aperture Priority” mode. You lower the number to widen the aperture. If you don’t have a fancy SLR camera you can still achieve the blurred background by shooting in “Portrait” mode on most any camera. Even my Droid has a portrait mode. ANY camera in auto is going to try to get as much of the frame in focus as possible, making sure all that background clutter is nice and clear. Next time your taking pictures dare to leave the auto setting and see what you get!

Even though you can tell what the background is, it doesn't take anything away from focusing on that cute little boy!

FREE photo shoot!

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For the month of November we have a couple of cool deals going on.

Weekday Pricing

Book your photo shoot for a week day and save $25 off a package of your choice.

Refer-a-Friend

If you refer a friend and they book a session you can save $25 off a package of your choice.

How does this work out to a free photo shoot?

Well for example: If you book a Mini shoot during the week, AND refer 3 friends that book a shoot, your $1oo package will be FREE!

How cool is that!?

Check out our current pricing.

**Southern California Only
There will be a charge for
travel greater than 15 miles
from the 92563 area code.

1.61803399 tips to instantly improve your photography

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It’s been called divine, The Golden Ratio is everywhere in nature from tiny sea shells, to a giant sunflower and all the way up to our galaxy.

Even the human body is prime example of the divine ratio as Leonardo Da Vinci taught us with “Vitruvian Man“. (With a slight variation shown to the left because it made me laugh.)

Aside from every facet of nature, artists and architects have been using it in their work for thousands of years, long before it was ever defined by Euclid.

So what is this “divine” Golden Ratio? Its most basic definition states that “two quantities are in the Golden Ratio if the ratio of the sum of the quantities to the larger quantity is equal to the ratio of the larger quantity to the smaller one. Approximately 1.61803398874989.          Or when a+b/a = a/b

 

“HUH? What the heck are you talking about!? How does this help my photography!?!?”

Fibonacci spiral

Fibonacci spiral - Graphical drawing of the golden ratio

Obviously we are not going to do all these ratio calculations every time we take a photo. So, we have “The Rule of Thirds”, a cheat on the golden ratio that gets you pretty close. The rule of thirds divides the frame on the thirds with two horizontal lines and two vertical lines giving you nine boxes, like tic-tac-toe.

The rule of thirds in action

The human eye is naturally drawn to these intersections. One sure way to tell a snap shot from a photo is that a snap shot almost always has the subject dead in the center of the frame. It doesn’t make it any easier that most cameras put the focus box right in the center. One little trick that you can use is to put the subject in the center of the frame, press the button half way to set the focus and recompose to put the subject at one of the third intersections.

Something to keep in mind as you compose your shot is that you usually want your subject pointing, moving, or looking into the center of your image. If you take a picture of your toddler and they are on the left hand side of the frame looking left out of the frame it leads your eye right out of the picture and wondering what they are looking at. If they are facing into the picture it tends to be much more engaging.

This one simple thing will improve your photography tremendously.

saguaro-national-park-sunrise

Arizona Sunrise - Josh Buchanan

As always, rules are meant to be broken, but you need to know the rules to break them properly. And most importantly take pictures and HAVE FUN!