You're so amazed by my cleverness in changing photo to foto.
And equally amazed that I cannot go look in a thesaurus for another word for tip that starts with an F. If any of you have any suggestions....feel free to share.
Anyhoo...
I have been meaning to share some photography tips for mom's on this blog for a very long time and never seem to get around to it.
So today's tip.
Get your camera out.
Make sure you have a working battery(ies).
OK--that's a good start.
Now....what do you want to remember from your summer?
The way the kids played in the sprinkler? The way they spread their cars or dolls out on the front porch? A few shots with their best friends--arms around each other?
Whatever it is...capture it with your camera.
It doesn't have to be perfect.
Trust me...you will enjoy looking back at these pictures because your kids grow up way too fast and you WILL forget these moments.
Excuse the run-on sentence.
Now...first of all...you need some basic skills to operate your camera. These posts--which I hope to do on periodic Fridays (no...I do not promise that they will be every week because that just sets a disorganized person like me up for failure)--will cover some basics to get your photos looking better.
These posts will be geared toward the point and shoot camera user or those with a DSLR who keep it in auto mode. And do not despair if you 'only' have a point and shoot. Better cameras do not necessarily take better pictures. You can have a great camera and still take rotten pictures if you don't know what you're doing. :) Conversely, if you know some basics, you can get really nice photos with a point and shoot.
So today's tip is this:
DO NOT....I repeat...DO NOT take pictures in full sun. This is a mistake made by many and results in horrible squinty faces and harsh shadows under the nose and chin. DO NOT take pictures at high noon unless you can take them in an area that is shaded.
I will show you some examples:
Here is an image that was taken in the SHADE. (I took this picture this morning while in my jammies so I didn't venture far out into the yard. If you take a photo in the shade--make sure you don't have sun behind you like I have in this image. You will end up with a sillouette because your camera will read the light behind you and adjust your settings for the lightest area in your photo. I manually adjusted mine to trick my camera, so that I could show you the difference between a photo in shade vs. sun.)
In this next image, I backed him up so that he was in full sun. Here is the result:
See how his eyes are squinted almost shut and he has shadows on his cheeks and chin? Not good.
If you are taking action shots mid-day, don't worry about this too much. Better to get the shot than wait for a better time of day. But if you are trying to get that cute shot of your daughter and her best friends all hugging and looking at you the day they leave for camp...do not place them in direct sun.
The best time of day to take pictures is early morning--just after sunrise (if any of you are weird enough to be up taking pictures before breakfast) OR 1-2 hours before sunset. So when you call your local photographer for a family picture that will be taken outdoors, they will tell you that it needs to be done in the evening.
Believe them.
You'll thank me later.
