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Playgrounds & Parks

Here you have it! If fill flash had been used, the kids faces would show more detail. Keep in mind though that because this pictures is cropped out of another picture, there are less pixels available to make an enlargement.

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Here you go! The kids are watching apple cider being made. Flash was used here to fill out the shadows nicely. Now you know the rest of this story. Classroom children on a field trip to a local apple orchard. Here the focus of the information is on just the children. To tell more of a story, take another picture which shows what they are interested in. See next picture. Here you have it! If fill flash had been used, the kids faces would show more detail. Keep in mind though that because this pictures is cropped out of another picture, there are less pixels available to make an enlargement. When there is a lot of activity and things are happening fast, you may find yourself taking pictures that don't seem to make much of a point. But if you look closer, you may find a picture within a picture. See next picture. Here is the second of the individual pictures that could be cropped out of the wagon trip to the orchard picture. You can easily learn to do this with my "photography for beginners" course offered on my website. In the last photograph, if you look closely, you will see that there are two more individual pictures that can be cropped out. If you have a special sized frame you want to use, it's easy to resize a picture to fit it. Please see the next picture. The teacher and children are going on a hayride to the apple orchard. Can you see the overexposed area behind them? Unless you use a tripod, and there is no movement, it is nearly impossible to get the exposure right for the subjects & the background. See Can you pick out the major problem in this picture? If you looked at your histogram right after you took it, you would see that the graph is way off or "spiked" on the right side. This area is overexposed. See the next picture. In this picture, the previous problem has been corrected a little, but you can still see the overexposed area in the upper right corner of this picture. See next picture. The Canon digital SLR camera's lens was lowered in this picture, thereby avoiding the problem of overexposure of the sky that you saw in the previous two pictures. This is because the camera is unable to capture the range of detail from both dark to light Here is another easy correction for the overexposure problem we saw a couple of pictures ago. The camera was pointed the opposite way; now the light is at the subject's back. No overexposure here! A group of kids playing "King of the Hill." Pictures tend to flatten out land contours because of the small amount of land that is included. Notice how including the children in the foreground & the trees in the background helps with this. "You are my brother; I am your sister." "You are my sister, I am your brother!" Jennifer & Josiah are playing a game adapted from the movie: "The Color Purple." The setting is in a small herb garden at "The Crossroads Village" near Flint, Michigan. Josiah is thrilled to be sitting in a vintage 1939 Piper J-3 Cub! His first words were: "You're putting me in front? But I don't know how to drive." Don't let very special occasions like this one happen with out taking some very special pictures too! Jennifer delightfully presents her brother with a wild flower in the spring time! You would be surprised at how simple things like this can create a wonderful picture worthy of printing on canvas! Two things would have improved this natural portrait of Josiah. First, either back up, or zoom out with your lens to include his hands. Second, have a helper hold up something for a white diffuser on Josiah's right side to soften the light from the sun. Innocent affection between a sister & a brother will always make for a cherished & delightful picture! Think about simple props that might be around your home, such as a wagon, to temporarily confine your little ones enabling you a few moments to frame some nice natural portraits. Notice that the sunlight is just over Josiah's right shoulder. It's good to pay attention to the direction of the sunlight when you are using your camera. Sunlight coming from the side of your subject will make a nice photograph. Josiah jumping over a wooden fence. Because this picture was taken in the shade of the woods & included action, I changed the ISO to 800 which gave me a shutter speed of 1/100 which stopped the action. A slow shutter speed with action equals blurring. Children are curious by nature & show great interest in all things that crawl on & under the ground. Whatever they are interested in, be there with your camera ready to document these important happenings in their lives! When you've decided to have a picture taking session with your children, first, stop & study what they are already involved in and photograph that activity before asking them to do something special for you. Notice that the natural light is on Jennifer's left side which puts the opposite side of her face in deep shadow. Fill flash was used in this picture so that the detail on that side of her face can be seen. When photographing in shade, make sure your child is in the same light and your camera is! Fill flash was also used for this portrait. When you take your child to a natural wooded area to be photographed, you really don't need to take along any props. It isn't necessary for a child to be looking at the camera & smiling to get a nice portrait of her! When the light is behind your child (look at Jennifer's hair), you'll want to use fill flash to chase away the deep shadows. Jennifer studies a spring time red tulip without plucking it! Although this picture was posed, the framing still was not the best. Can you see how it could have been framed better? When children reach the age of about seven years, you can usually get them to do a few things you ask them to do for a portrait. But, be ready, it's only for a short while! When you are trying to photograph a very special portrait of children, it's good to take several pictures so that you can choose the most natural one for that photo on canvas!
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