Enter This Online Baby Photo Contest Now
January 21, 2010
When you are enjoying taking photos of your adorable baby, you might be thinking of capturing that smile and those sparkling eyes to look back on in the future. You are probably not thinking about paying for college and scholarship funds. But now you can combine the two with the latest online baby photo contest.
The Regis and Kelly Baby Contest 2010 offers a scholarship fund worth $125,000 as first prize, something that could make your baby’s future education secure and save you a lot of worries. And you have a chance of winning that prize. The deadline is the 29th January at 5pm Eastern time, so you have eight more days to capture the perfect shot of your beautiful baby.
While the photo contest is about how cute your baby is, an important factor is your skills as a photographer. Judges are not looking for professional studio portraits, but they do look for good complimentary lighting, good composition and sharp focus: all the things that show off how cute your baby really is and make a satisfying portrait. They also look for photos with an intimate happy feel, so if you can capture your baby in a happy mood relating directly to you behind the camera, you are on the right track.
This contest is for children from the age of 6 months to 48 months on January 5th 2010. You must be resident in the US or Canada.
Guidelines for the photo itself state that the photo must be recent, taken within the past month. It must not have been taken by a professional photographer, but you may use lighting and photographic techniques to get the best photo possible. If you are submitting a photo to this contest, check the format and size requirements first. A simple precaution like this will make sure your photo gets through to the judging stage and has a chance to win.
So look through all the photography tips on our site, take a quick online photography course, grab your camera and your baby and start photographing now. You could win a fantastic prize and, even if you don’t win, you’ll have a beautiful selection of photos to put in your baby album and remember these precious times forever. Look out for other baby photo contests to enter your best photos into, as there are several more worth entering. Just make sure that you don’t enter the same photo into more than one competition, or it could be disqualified. If you take plenty of photos you should get loads of great ones and plenty of choice.
Mum and Photographer
Natural Light
January 20, 2010
Earlier I spoke about light and how important light is in photography, and that one thing that will help you improve your photography is to understand light, and figure out how to use light. Without light there would be no photographs, so it is important that you learn how to use light correctly.
Right along with light comes learning how to use the natural props around the child you want to photograph. This is known as properly framing your photograph. For example, in an earlier photograph I shared with you a young girl was outdoors with light falling on her hair and the background was blurred.
This meant that the subject of the photograph would immediately draw your eyes to her and the background would not compete with the subject. But sometimes you can use the background to make the photograph more interesting, in particular if you could include the proper use of light.
Framing The Photo & Using Natural Light
Take the photograph on the right. Here, a young girl is sitting on a chair looking out a window holding a white lace curtain in her left hand. Behind her the background is dark, but the light falls on the subject’s face and knees creating a lot of interest for the observer.
Notice how the subject is slightly left and above the center of the photograph. This is using the rule of thirds (which we will discuss in another post soon) so that as soon as you see the photograph your eyes are brought to the child’s face. The photograph holds your interest and you then can take in the rest of the image giving you a feeling of peace and gentleness.
Framing your shot properly and taking into consideration the natural light that is available will help you produce interesting and beautiful photographs of your children that will take you back to the place and time where you shot it.
Remember, keep taking lots and lots of photographs of your kids. You will be glad you did!
Betty Muscott, Child Photographer
Put One Of Your Own Special Photos On Canvas For Valentine’s Day
January 19, 2010
Valentine’s Day is just over three weeks away now and if you don’t want to resort to last minute flowers and chocolates as a gift for your loved one, now is the time to start thinking about that special gift that will make their heart glow. When you’ve got young children it can be hard to keep romance alive, but your shared love of those wonderful kids is the glue that holds you together, through sleepless nights and stress, as well as the joys that they bring. The perfect gift for Valentine’s Day could be a gorgeous picture of your young family, celebrating your love by putting one of your own photos of you all on canvas.
There are plenty of other personalized photo gifts that you can create with your photos and many romantic ones too, but a canvas print is one of the most enduring of all. A good quality canvas print can outlast you, its image remaining bright and sharp for a hundred years, so that your grandchildren can still enjoy it. A beautiful photograph of your family, perhaps a mother and baby picture or an informal group of you all, will encapsulate all the love you feel for your family and keep its memory alive for the next generations. How much more romantic can you get than that?
You still have some time left to look through all your photos for the perfect shot, or take a brand new one if you can’t find anything that feels just right. The last day to order for standard shipping is Feb 2nd if you go through Photoworks.
So start thinking about setting up the perfect portrait of your family. Do you just want a portrait of the kids together, or do you want to be in the photo with your partner too? A tripod will make it perfectly possible to set up a photo using the self-timer, but otherwise enlist the help of a friend to take the photo, once you have worked out how you want it. Small kids get bored of having their photo taken very quickly, so make sure you decide on the background and look at the lighting before you get them involved.
Once you have grouped yourselves get your friend to take lots of shots in quick succession and try out some variations. Having everyone looking at the camera and smiling is the obvious arrangement, but try out others too. Attract the kids’ attention and have some photos of you all interacting and looking at each other rather than at the camera. It gives a wonderful intimate feel and can be fun if you get them laughing too. Experiment. Don’t just limit yourself to one session. Try different days and different locations until you get just what you are looking for. You are capturing a mood as well as a likeness, and moods can change from day to day.
Then choose your best shot and put it on canvas for a wonderful Valentine’s gift.
Mum and Photographer
The Look Of A Photograph
January 18, 2010
Before you start your journey to capturing great images of your children you first need to know how those great photographs look. You can start by browsing the internet and looking through the portfolios of some of the professional child photographers. This will give you a sense of what great photos look like.
But don’t be discouraged as you look at the images and think that it is impossible for you to take some for yourself. Rather, just spend a few moments and try to understand what about each photograph attracts your attention. Where did your eyes go when you first saw the image? Other than the child, was there anything else in the picture?
Depth Of Field and Selective Focus
Notice in the photograph on the right how the light falls on the subjects hair, and how the background is blurred. Your eyes are immediately drawn to the subject and nothing distracts you from understanding the point of this photograph, does it? Simply paying attention to lighting and the background can improve your photographs.
Now that you have an idea of what a great photograph looks like think about how you can photograph your child. You don’t have to know everything about your camera to make a huge improvement in your photography. You don’t even need an expensive, complex digital single lens reflex camera with all the bells and whistles.
Even if all you have is a simple point-and-shoot camera that limits your choices you can still learn how to use the functions it has to create better photographs. In the beginning exposure, depth of field, settings like aperture and shutter can befuddle you. But over time, with a little study and practice, you too can learn how to use these things to create wonderful photographs.
Over time we will discuss all of these items, but for now just learning to see light better and working on composition will yield amazing results in your photography. Learning camera techniques will allow you to get the photos you envision and prevent situations that result in poor photographs.
Until next time take lots and lots of photographs of your children – you will be glad you did!
Betty Muscott, Child Photographer
DXHQQ8Y3HKD6
Create an Easy System For Archival Photograph Storage
January 14, 2010
The fun part of photography is undoubtedly taking the photographs and then creating beautiful prints with them. The dull but essential bit is making sure that your images are safely stored, so that they will last for the rest of your life and beyond. Backing up your photographs is often the last thing you feel like doing after a busy day out with the family. You can make it a lot easier for yourself if you create a simple and effective system for archival photograph storage.
For digital images one of the best storage methods is using special archival quality CDs and DVDs. These CDs are made of long lasting materials that are less liable to corrosion than regular CDs, so will protect the images saved on them for a very long time. So the first step to creating an easy storage solution is to buy a good stock of archival quality CDs and keep them close at hand, so that there is always one available.
Your back up CDs will soon mount up, so for dust free long term storage you will need a neat storage system to put them into. The first option is to purchase a set of CD storage boxes. It is best to buy from a photographic storage specialist so that you can be sure that the boxes are made of acid free materials. They will probably also come with corrosion protective sleeves too. Stack these boxes on shelves near your computer and it will be a simple task to back up your photos and just pop the latest CD into the storage box.
Another option is to store your archival CDs in pocket sleeves in album style ring binders, in which case you should again make sure that the sleeves are acid free and corrosion resistant.
Buy yourself a special acid free pen to label each CD with the date and subject matter of the photo files saved.
If you can just get yourself into the habit of backing up and storing your photos safely, you will have peace of mind that your photos are well protected. You’ll be able to access the photos easily at any time and won’t be caught short by your computer crashing and losing al your precious photos.
It’s up to you how often you back up your photos. If you take a lot of photos regularly you will probably want to burn a CD every week, but if you take just a few photos every now and then, you might not feel it is worth using a CD for just a few images. In that case back up the photos anyway, but onto a separate drive of your computer, a memory stick or an external hard drive. Collect your photos into a back up file over a certain period and then burn a CD once you have enough photos to make it worth while.
Of course if you take a really special photo that you would hate to lose, then burn it onto a CD straight away and never mind the wasted space… a precious photo of your baby’s first smile, or a once in a lifetime family reunion, is irreplaceable and you want to make sure it is as securely protected as possible.
Mum and Photographer
Exposure
January 13, 2010
When starting out to learn about photography you can sometimes find yourself lost in a sea of terms. Aperture, f-stops, ISO, megapixels, exposure and more can leave your head spinning, and prevent you from getting the information you need to take great photographs of your children.
While it may seem daunting to you I urge you to sit back, relax and take it one baby step at a time. You know the saying “How do you eat an elephant?” – one bite at a time, of course. Photography is no different, take it in small bites, one at a time, and before you know it you will have learned more than you ever thought possible, and most of it will become second nature.
Let’s take “Exposure” for example. The definition of exposure is simple: Technically speaking an exposure is a photographic image. An exposure is created when a certain amount of light (controlled by the aperture setting of your camera) hits the sensor in the camera for a certain period of time (controlled by the speed of the shutter).
In other words you, as the photographer, can control how your photographic image looks simply by controlling the aperture setting and shutter speed of your camera. Over time we will discuss in detail aperture and shutter speed, but for now you need only concern yourself with the limitations presented by the automatic modes of your camera.
Beginning photographers are always befuddled by the issues of exposure, depth of field and the settings on their cameras, so most of you simply use the automatic, or program, modes on your cameras.
If you have used the auto or program mode on your camera you have probably found that the photographs, by and large, are pretty good – but not always. Camera manufacturers make cameras that come with a number of default settings that allow you to achieve the results you are looking for.
You may also have discovered that when you use the auto mode on your camera that everything is in focus – foreground and background – which is what the computer in the camera has chosen. But what if you want your child to be in focus and the background out of focus? What if you would like to capture your child splashing through a puddle and freeze the water droplets in mid air? Or get a photo of your child running through a field and want to capture the light on their hair but still capture light on their faces?
All of these situations can be achieved by learning a little more about exposure. There are three key elements to exposure: shutter speed, aperture and ISO settings. Each of these elements set correctly will result in a properly exposed photograph.
Understanding these elements so that you can use them in creative ways can change the look and feel of your photographs dramatically, and in future posts we will explore each of these elements in detail.
Until then be sure your are taking photos of your kids as often as possible.
Personalized Photo Gift Ideas for Valentines Day
January 12, 2010
Christmas is over, we’ve cleared away the tree and breathed a sad but relieved sigh that life is back to its dull old routine. No more gifts to buy… but is that true? February isn’t that far away and with it another gift giving day. What are you planning on giving your partner for Valentine’s Day? If you haven’t thought about it yet there is still plenty of time to come up with a special and thoughtful gift. Open up your photo files and then scan the internet for some personalized photo gift ideas.
Here are six gift ideas that leapt from the screen for inexpensive and fun photo gifts for the special person in your life:
1. A photo mug with a heart design – OK, so a mug isn’t very original… but we all use them and you can get some very pretty designs and interesting shapes these days!
2. A mousepad with a photo of you both framed in a heart – It’s another everyday item, but again something that your partner will see every day and which is bound to make them smile.
3. A beautiful cherry wood keepsake box with a photo inlaid on the lid. Put a special photo of you both or of the kids and it will be the perfect place to store precious memories and keepsakes.
4. A silver charm bracelet with a miniature photo charm on it. You can add more charms onto it as you like, perhaps you could add one every year, or else make one charm for each of you and each of the kids, so that the whole family is collected together in a gorgeous miniature photo gallery.
5. A sterling silver photo locket with a monogram on the outside and a photo inside. This could be a wonderful personal gift for the love of your life.
6. If your partner is a wine lover, then buy a very special bottle of wine and make it personal with a wooden photo wine box. Choose a photo of you both to slide into the front of the wooden box with a special message.
For standard shipping, most of these gifts need to be ordered by the end of January, so you still have plenty of time to go through your photo files and create the perfect gift for your partner in time for Valentines Day.
Mum and Photographer
DXHQQ8Y3HKD6
Light
January 11, 2010
OK, now that we have discussed how to hold your camera and why it is important (camera shake), we can now move on to the most important thing you need to consider when taking photos of children. And that is – LIGHT!
Think about that for a minute. When people first discovered how to create images of what they could see onto other materials it was all about light. The word photography derives from the Greek words ‘fos’ – meaning light and ‘grafo’ – to write.
The very first photograph was made in 1825 by a French inventor named Niépce on polished pewter plate covered with bitumen of Judea, a petroleum derivative.
As it turns out Bitumen will harden when exposed to light. The remaining, unhardened Bitumen was then washed away leaving only the hardened Bitumen. Niépce then polished the pewter metal plate thereby creating a negative image which could be coated with ink and then impressed upon paper producing a photographic print.
Later, when camera film was invented, the same principle applied. Light was allowed to enter the camera, at first through a pin hole and later through a lens, onto film. In 1884 George Eastman developed dry gel on paper, or film, to replace the photographic plate. This invention meant that a photographer no longer had to carry boxes of plates and toxic chemicals around with him when taking photographs. By July of 1888 Eastman’s Kodak camera came onto the market with the slogan “You press the button, we do the rest”.
Before you pick up your camera take a few minutes and look around you. If at home during the day, observe the shafts of light coming through your windows. Notice throughout the day how the light changes direction and brightness. As evening approaches and you begin to turn on lights, observe how fluorescent light differs from the light produced by tungsten bulbs.
Have you ever walked over to one of those jewelry stores in the mall and noticed how the overhead light makes the diamonds in the display case sparkle? Or have you ever noticed how the sky is lit with wonderful colors just after the sun sets, or the crimson to orange glow as the sun rises on the horizon?
Light is all around us, and we take it for granted with barely a notice. But if you want to take great photographs you need to start by observing all of the light around you. Look at shadows, glare off of glass, moon glow and the different kinds of light you see as you go in and out of different buildings.
Once you begin to observe light around you it will become possible for you to understand how to use light in your photographs. Without light there would be no photographs, film or digital, so start at the start – check out the LIGHT!
DXHQQ8Y3HKD6
A New Grand Daughter Arrives!
January 10, 2010
Well, after all of the waiting, and a sleepless Friday night, our daughter gave birth to a beautiful baby girl who arrived weighing 6 pounds 10 ounces and 20 inches long! Checked out carefully and pronounced perfect, the little one was promptly introduced to her family.
Mother headed to the hospital Friday morning (lots of snow, schools closed) and entered the hospital to deliver this new little bundle of joy. Everything moved along quickly with a number calls to Grandpa and I, but by midnight still no grand daughter!
Its 5:30am and the phone rings after tossing and turning all night, expectations high but STILL no grand daughter! She was taking her good old time, but around 7:00am finally she decided it was time and arrived, helped along by the doctors.
So, grab the camera, head out the door and on to the hospital. No time for video, just some still shots as mother, father and daughter are exhausted. Just enough time for me to quickly hold the new arrival, then into waiting Grandpa’s arms, camera out, flash attached, picture taken:
 Grandfather and Granddaughter  Newborn Granddaughter |
Everyone is healthy and safe, and soon back to the hospital for more visiting and – of course – more photographs. Best of all I have a new subject to photograph, and I can hardly wait!
Cannon SD1200 IS Digital Camera
January 9, 2010
If you are looking for a cool looking camera that is smaller than a pack of playing cards, then you have found a great “fit” for your pocket. This pocket point-and-shoot camera is approximately the size of a flip cell phone and weighs only 4.23oz.
The SD1200 IS comes with 10.0 mp (not to worry – that’s plenty of pixels, believe me!), Cannon’s new DIGIC 4 processor and is perfect for taking pictures at any casual occasion. It has a number of features making it easy to use, just like all Cannon cameras.
The combined zoom gives any photographer between 35mm and 105mm with the 3x optical, 4x digital and 12x combined zoom feature.
While this is not a lot of zoom oomph, it is plenty for the average photographer. To add to the pleasure the camera has a great 2.5″ widescreen LCD screen, making it easy to view your shots and then show them off to your friends. In addition it has an optical viewfinder.
To add to the fun you can choose from any of the following colors:
  |
  |
  |
  |
  |
  |
The linked optical viewfinder is a better substitute for the LCD for framing your shots, and was stuck at the top of the camera limiting the size of the LCD space. Today most people use the LCD for framing shots, but anyone who has experienced camera shake knows an optical viewfinder can really help.
Priced competitively you can get more information at Buy An SD1200 IS here.
Remember, take lots of photos of your little ones often – you will be glad you did!
- Sign up for our FREE eBook and discover how to take wonderful and interesting photographs of your children:
