Take Great Photos of your Children
December 22, 2009
Do you need an excuse to take photos of your children? Anytime is a perfect time. My children are my favorite subjects whether I am using the automatic settings or exploring the manual settings on my camera. No matter what the purpose of my photography, I want to the best pictures possible. As parents, we all have asked ourselves how can we get the same brilliant photos as the photography studios. Keeping some tips in mind when taking photos will help you achieve the photos you are after.
On the Move
Kids in general are always on the move this is a fact of life. You can use the busy body action to your advantage, so you will have natural poses. Make sure to get down on their eye level to shoot the pictures. They do not have to be looking into the camera for every pose. Some of my favorite photos are when my children are interested in something else, be it their favorite teddy bear or a bug crawling on the lawn. My sons are extremely active in sports football seems to be the one sport that they love to play almost year round. When taking sports pictures you need to move around the field, so you can take pictures at different angles. Keep in mind what pictures you want to get out of the game but always shoot a variety of shots. For example one of my sons is a Center on the Offense of course I want to capture him hiking the ball, but I know that the action does not stop there, so I keep on shooting. Make sure to lead your subject with the viewfinder. Make sure that your subject is on one side of the frame so that when the picture is shot they will have room to remain in the frame.
Remember the Age
You know your children and what they can handle. Some children love the camera and will pose for you. Teenagers especially boys think they are too cool for posed pictures, so be prepared to take the picture when you get a smile. Make sure your child is rested and feed so they will be in a better mood to work with you. A tired and hungry kid is not fun for either you or the child. Tantrums can be another obstacle you may come across you can either snap photos of your child’s “finest” moment or you can put away the camera. Sometimes the siblings’ picking on each other becomes a great photo.
Remember that professional photographers do snap a lot of pictures for you to review. Now that digital cameras are very common, the easiest tip to give you is to take a lot of pictures and delete the ones you do not want.
Take Time At Christmas To Share Photos Online For Free
December 22, 2009
The days are flying by and there’s still so much to do to get ready for Christmas Day, so why add anything more to the to do list? Some families manage to be together at Christmas, but more often these days we find ourselves at opposite ends of the country, or even in different countries, to parents and siblings. Sharing the joy of Christmas with them is easy if you take lots of photos throughout the day and even easier if you can share those photos online for free.
If you’ve never used a photo sharing service before it may seem too much to ask to figure out how it works, when there is so much else that needs doing right now. If you have even a few minutes spare though, take the time to sign up for an online photo sharing service and you’ll see how simple it all is to use. As long as you have a fast internet connection, your photos will upload to the service easily and you can e-mail a link to family and friends far away, so that they can view all your favorite photos of Christmas Day.
With this service you don’t have to re-size the photos as you would if you e-mailed them and you can include far more than your would in an e-mail, so you can show all the fun moments from the day: your kids opening their stockings with eager anticipation; the baby crawling under the Christmas tree to sit in a box amid the wrapping paper; each child opening the gift sent by grandparents who can’t be with you; the kids wearing a special new outfit; or just helping get Christmas dinner ready.
It is simple for your family to view the photos too, even if they aren’t very internet savvy. You can e-mail them a direct link to access your photo album and they can view the photos at their own pace and even order prints of them if they wish.
Start sharing photos online and it will become a simple and easy way to keep the rest of your family in touch with your children’s lives however far away they are. And it’s a great way to encourage yourself to take more photos of your children as often as you can. When you have an appreciative audience of grandparents and fond aunts and uncles viewing regularly, there’s even more reason to get out your camera and document the fun times and the everyday moments, which pass so quickly unless you catch them on camera.
Mum and Photographer
Get Cards Printed and Share Photos Online
December 17, 2009
If you are one of those people who are well organized you will have already had Christmas cards printed and sent out weeks ago… but if like me and many others Christmas has crept up on you and you’ve suddenly realized that it’s too late to get your own personalized photo cards printed in time to send out, what can you do? Well there may not be time to print out Christmas cards, but you can still upload them to a photo sharing site with a special greeting message and share your Christmas photos online or by e-mail for friends to enjoy.
Many photo sharing sites offer a lot of other services too, including Photoworks who offer a huge range of photo cards in all sorts of designs. It may be too late to get personalized Christmas cards printed, but what about sending New Year’s greetings cards instead. Or making a personalized set of thank you cards to send out to family and friends who have sent you gifts this Christmas.
The great thing about sending late non-Christmas cards, is that you can use some of your best festive photos from Christmas to put on the card, so they still have a seasonal feel, but you don’t have to be in such a hurry to get them sent out. You can take your time writing individual thoughtful messages in each card, instead of just hurriedly signing your name. It may be more traditional to get all your cards to the recipient before Christmas Day, but they’ll have more time to read and appreciate your thoughtful greetings after the Christmas rush is over.
I suggest a combination of e-mail cards or photo sharing and a printed personalized photo card as a solution to last minute Christmas greetings. An e-mail shows you re thinking about the person, but once looked at it will be lost in the e-mail inbox and maybe never looked at again. A printed card with a photo of your kids may take pride of place on grandma’s dresser for months to come, or smile down from the refrigerator for the rest of the year. You could even have a set of cards printed especially for your children to write their own thank you letters to grandparents and family.
A personalized photo card is much more meaningful and lasting than an e-mail, even if it does come late. Plus there is something about handwritten messages, especially in this day and age of typed e-mails, that is so much more personal and special.
Mum and Photographer
Archival Photo Storage Supplies
December 16, 2009
No matter what your photo storage needs, they can be met with the numerous kinds of archival photo storage supplies. There are storage systems for those who want to use boxes, albums, scrapbooks, or hang your pictures like file folders. There is a national standard for having a product be deemed archival safe. The American National Standards have given the recommendations on film and print storage.
Photo Boxes
Photo storage boxes come in a variety of sizes. Will you be storing your photos permanently in boxes or do you need a place to store them temporarily until you can store them differently? Do you need a place to store unfinished scrapbook pages without them getting messed up? Look into scrapbook size photo boxes. The photo storage boxes allow you to file your photos in a variety of manner, so they can be easily customized to your personal taste.
Albums and Scrapbooks
You can still have your photos in an album without have to scrapbook them. The album should not be the magnetic page style if you want your albums preserved for future generations. The adhesive on the pages will lead to yellowing and premature aging of the photos. You can make your own album placing archival grade pages in a three style binder that is archival grade. Scrapbooking is a fun way to tell the story of your photos. You will need storage for your photos that you are not currently using in the theme of your scrapbook. When shopping for scrapbook supplies make sure that they do mention that they are archival safe. True quality scrapbook supplies will be archival safe.
File Folders
You can put your photos in archive quality folders that can hang in your filing cabinet. Wondering where you should put all those negatives that you have floating around? There are specifically designed archive quality folders to store them, where they can be enjoyed for years to come. You can place slides you might have in these types of file folders.
Some exciting things have come out of the mass public is looking to store their photos long term. The scrapbooking world has become so large to accommodate all their fans. The supplies have come down in price. They are also offering more colors to match your décor. The supplies are easier to find and
there are more supplies to choose. Now that the general public knows how to preserve their photos, we just need to remember to identify the people in the pictures.
Capture The Joy And Share Your Christmas Photo Album Online
December 15, 2009
When you have kids, the magic of Christmas comes back into your life again. Seeing the awe on their faces as they gaze at the myriad of sparkling lights on the Christmas tree, enjoying the ninety fifth rendition of Away in the Manger just as much as the first, loving all the secrecy and suspended excitement over the wrapping of presents, going wild with the glitter glue to create Christmas cards for everyone they know, all these moments are ones that you want to capture to create a special Christmas photo album that you can share online with your family, so they too can share your kids joy at rediscovering Christmas.
Make sure that you take enough time out of the adult stress and rush of Christmas preparations to share this innocent joy with your children. Camera in hand you can rediscover that childhood awareness of Christmas as a special time and step out of the stress of crazy malls and too much to do in too little time.
Make time to photograph the quiet moments as well as the big events: your child patiently drawing a special card, or working hard on making an angel out of silver foil and string, helping make cookies with flour all over them, hanging the first ornament on the tree or secretly feeling the presents to try and guess what is in each one. All these things have a place in your photo album, alongside all the bigger events like the nativity play and carol concerts. Even babies get some feeling of Christmas as a special time, as they lie watching twinkling lights or crawl into a mass of wrapping paper to enjoy the rustling sounds.
Now is the time to concentrate on capturing the moments, both special and ordinary. Take lots of photos of all the preparations for Christmas. We all know that the day itself goes by in a flash, but the excitement is here already with every breath of frosty air, every scent of cinnamon wafting from the kitchen.
No-one expects you to find the time to make albums in the midst of all the Christmas preparations. But by taking all these photos now you will have all the material you need to create a gorgeous photo album when Christmas is over and things start to feel a bit flat. You’ll be able to relive all those special moments, which you hardly had time to enjoy at the time, as you work on putting together an album that you can send out to family as part of a Christmas thank you e-mail, or you can just put your album online for invited friends and family to view.
Mum and Photographer
