Try Your Hand At Night Photography With Your Children
Taking pictures of your children at night is a rewarding and exciting activity; unfortunately, digital cameras don’t always make it easy to do. On the other hand, because taking photos with a digital camera is essentially free, you can experiment and <i>try your hand at night photography.</i>
First of all, not every camera will work for night photography. If your camera is not capable of shutter speeds greater than one second you may have trouble getting decent photographs at night. In truth, your digital camera should have a manual exposure mode allowing you to set shutter speed by hand.
If you are shopping for a camera and are interested in night shots, try and get a camera with a bulb setting (like the Canon Digital XT camera
In fact, a camera with a wireless remote control for the shutter is very handy for night photography, since you can activate the camera’s shutter without shaking it. If your camera doesn’t have this function, the try using the self-timer feature instead.
To start out taking photos of your kids at night I suggest you go to a lighted playground, the downtown are where there are a lot of neon lights, or even an amusement park to begin with. The idea is to find somewhere that has a lot of interesting lights and motion to try your hand at night photography.
Here are some suggestions to follow for your first nighttime pictures:
- Mount your camera on a tripod. With exposure times greater than 1/2 second or longer there is no way you can hold the camera steady enough; Click on image to see where to get your tripod.
- Switch your camera to the manual exposure mode, and set the aperture to a medium setting such as f/5.6;
- Set the shutter speed to 1/2 second;
- Place your child in front of an interesting scene and have them make some dance or karate moves;
- If there are some cars coming in the background wait until they appear in the viewfinder and snap the photo;
- Next, double the shutter speed to 1 second and shoot the same scene again;
- Compare the results, and take more pictures;
- If your camera records exposure information for each of the pictures this is great, and you can review it to learn what works well.
Photographing children at night
On the right you can see a photo of a child looking through a telescope at the moon. Note how the light from the moon provides the light we need to photograph this child. Think of interesting ways to try your hand at night photography with your own children.
After you have taken a lot of night shots you can compare them side by side to see the effect of increasing your exposure times. Remember, however, don’t trust your camera’s exposure meter at night because you can almost always get more interesting pictures by doubling or tripling the shutter speed suggested by the camera.
Remember, keep taking lots and lots of photographs of your kids. You will be glad you did!
Betty Muscott, Child Photographer
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