Beware of the sun
Look at Josiah's face and see how fill flash works
One of the first outdoor photography tips for taking better pictures of your children is; always take a quick look at your watch. By that I mean that there are better and worse times during the day to take photographs. The worst time of all is probably mid day, when the sun is directly overhead. The noon sun creates extremely harsh shadows and casts unflattering light for almost any kind of photographic session when the extremely bright light (particularly in the summertime) can tend to overwhelm a digital camera. When the sun is shining, you really need to think about outdoor flash photography and how you can overcome the deep shadows it causes on your kids faces.
So, what is the alternative? Well, you can shoot your photographs earlier or later in the day. Professional photographers traditionally like the warm colors created by the sun in the late afternoon, but shooting photographs of your children in the morning is almost as good. If you are traveling, or are on vacation, for instance, you want to get some very good pictures, then you can plan your photo sessions for the early morning hours and then again for later in the day.
Picture taken without fill flash
If you make a conscious effort to take your best pictures before or after the high noon sun, you’re halfway home. You also need to think about the position of the sun in the sky. In the old days photographers were taught to take pictures with the sun to their back. The reason was very simple: the sun would best illuminate the subject.
Unfortunately, if you are photographing children, the sun would blast that light right into their faces, causing them to squint. That made for some mighty ugly pictures. A much better solution is to position the sun over your left or right shoulder, but no matter where you place the sun, don’t shoot towards the sun unless you are intentionally trying to photograph the sunset or a silhouette.
Use fill flash
While most people think of their cameras flash as something to be used at night or in the dark, it is also a great way to improve the look of your photographs during the daytime. Set your camera at it’s forced flash mode, and use it to shoot portraits of your children and any other outdoor photographs of them. You will find that the flash fills in shadows quite nicely, dramatically improving the quality of your images. You may be surprised, in fact, just how much full flash can do to improve photographs that you thought were pretty good to begin with. Remember, you will need to be fairly close for this to work. Stay within the published range in your camera or flash manual. You will see your outdoor portrait photography immediately improving.
The camera in the picture on the left is a great camera for fill flash. Click on image for more information. You may want to add an external flash unit too. I would suggest the Canon Speedlite 430EX II Flash.
Creating Silhouettes
Another cool idea is to photograph your child as a silhouette — in fact, new photographers do it all the time. They just don’t always do it on purpose. A silhouette is the image of your child in near or total blackness in front of an interesting scene which is correctly exposed.
The easiest way to photograph a silhouette of your child is simply to position yourself so that the child you would like to silhouette is arranged against a bright background, such as the sky. Point the camera directly into the sky and slightly depress your camera shutter release — that locks in the exposure based on the bright sky. Then, recompose your picture of the child and shoot. What you’ll most likely get is a grossly underexposed subject, since the exposure was based on the brighter sky. If your child isn’t quite silhouetted, you can underexpose the image even more using the EV controls on your camera. You may also want to use your camera’s spot meter to lock the exposure on a brighter piece of the sky.
You may discover that the child is out of focus because the camera focused on infinity when you pointed it at the bright sky. If that’s the case, check to see if your camera has a separate exposure lock button and use it. If not, you may need to set the exposure manually or focus the camera manually instead. One way or another, when your subject is too close to infinity you need to find a way to separate the exposure and focusing aspects of your camera.
Betty Muscott, Child Photographer
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About Betty Muscott
Betty A. Muscott is an experienced child photographer and online entrepreneur for tools to capture great photographs of children by parents and grandparents. Connect with Betty on Google+
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