A lot of cameras were given and received as Christmas presents. Here’s an entry about children’s photography. Too many times in my earlier days, I tried to make the perfect portrait of my children. It usually ended with me being frustrated and my kids crying and a lot of bad photos.

Forget about the perfect smile and the kids looking directly at the camera. What works and is the best way to make photos is to just have fun during the portrait session.

Whatever the kids do is cute.  That’s the key. If they cry or run away or smile it will be fine.

In a nutshell that is the key or secret. Too many sessions are ruined by overzealous parents trying to make children do what they want.

You cannot reason with a tired or hungry three-year-old! However long they give you, consider it a gift.

The gallery photos that I have included are from a recent session for a 16 month old and his mom. I made sure that the timing of the session was after his nap and that he had eaten. Then we went to a local park and let him run around.

I utilized a lot of compositional techniques as he ran around and waited for various lighting situations to maximize my opportunities for the most good photos. Practice photographing a small child with your main subject in the areas of convergence. Don’t expect great results on your first session, but practice to achieve greater and greater results.

Enjoy and success!

Here it is! To kick off my new ebook, “Take Better Photos Now,” I’m having a Christmas special. “Take Better Photos Now” For only $19.95 and includes the ebook in PDF form & the CD-ROM which includes “How to Choose a Digital Camera,” “Digital Photography Basics,” A 50 minute video and the “Take Better Photos Now,” a 110 page ebook. All the books are in PDF form and are readable on your computer.

This special will be available only until December 23rd and is a great way to get the ebook download for yourself and the CD-ROM for someone that loves photography as your gift for Christmas.

FYI, for clarity the ebooks are in PDF format and viewable on both MAC and PC.

On the CD-ROM, you will receive 3 PDF’s (which are seen above) and an almost hour long video that allows me to go in-depth into about 35 of the images in the ebook.

Thank You for looking and Merry Christmas to all!

The Christmas Special Offer can be found here:
http://www.takebetterphotosnow.com/ChristmasSpecial/

A little bit ago @Sylvia asked if I could post a photo of the infamous snoot that I have been using lately on some of my freelance jobs.

The first image shows a piece of black foam paper that I bought at Wal-Mart for I believe 69 cents(maybe 99). I added velcro strips, both the loops and the hooks and stretched it to fit my Canon 580 EXII. I made this one to be about 7 inches long. Just smush it down into the shape you want it and modify your light!

With the snoot, I can add light into a scene without overlighting the entire photo. This photo needed just a bit of light on the subject’s face, but not anywhere else. So as not to overexpose the light from the snoot, I dialed it to about 1 1/2 stops over the existing ambient exposure. I believe the ambient exposure was around f5.6 at 1/200 at ISO 200, thus the snooted light was set to f 8.5 to achieve just a bit of additional lighting on our subject’s face. There is some spill onto the paddle, jacket and the piling behind our subject, but it still works for me.

I hope that helps and thanks for your patience. Enjoy!

I just wanted to thank everyone for participating in the contest last week. I’m hoping to have another contest soon. Now, the winners are:

@Whitney Schroeder

@Shelly Dumser

@Mike Sampson

Congratulations to the three winners! Please email me at michael@takebetterphotosnow.com so I can mail out your prize.

Michael

Layering a photograph is a great digital photography technique. It creates visual complexity and when combined with effective composition, it helps to lead your viewers eye to your main subject while maintaining visual interest.

Here’s a few techniques:

Look to place items such as plants, other people even parts of your main subjects body like their hands.

In the photo with the boy holding his hand, his hand leads you straight to the subject’s eyes. This is a great example of how the technique helps to lead the viewer’s eyes to the subject.

The photo of the boy looking through the bars at a playground helps to illustrate utilizing whatever is in the environment to create visual complexity. The pattern of the red bars leads the viewers eye right to the boy’s face.

Our image of the little girl smelling the flower uses a plant in a backyard to create multiple layers for the viewers. Because of the use of shallow depth of field, that also creates more visual layers that leads to the in focus area where our main subject is. Enjoy!

Cure Magazine Shoot

I recently photographed a medical caregiver who was nominated to be included in a special book for Cure Magazine. An essay was written by Kady Lane about her friend and nurse, Bob Garvin, of Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles.

I was contracted to photograph the two of them any way I wanted by the magazine. A dream assignment, since anytime a client says, ” Do whatever you want we like your style,” just wish I could hear that more often.

I arrived to find the area I was to make the portrait in total afternoon shade. Very blue light due to the shade and I had about 1 1/2 hours of light left in the day.

Moving to another spot was out of the question, since one of my subjects wasn’t to mobile due to her illness. Actually, Kady would probably have moved, but I didn’t want her to.

So my original idea of a shaft of light on the main subject quickly was dashed and I looked around for some inspiration.

I found it at the entrance of the cancer wing. Beautiful red rock tile/slate covered the entrance and would make a great background for my portraits.

I took an ambient exposure and set my camera at f8 @ 200/sec at ISO 400. So, I set my flash at 1/2 power and my camera to manual. I ended up shooting at f20 @ 200 which is 3 stops over the ambient and made for a very dramatic lighting ratio.

Bob is an amazing person who was funny and personable. I can see why Kady nominated him and his story was accepted to be published.

The trick to this type of lighting is to modify the light that is coming out of your flash. You can use a very expensive gizmo or make your own.

I bought a piece of black foam paper for less than a buck and put some velcro on it and wrapped it around my 580 EXII flash and made a snoot. That’s the shape of the light that you see on the wall behind the subjects.

Then it was just a matter of moving the light and the subjects into the most pleasing pose possible.

One of the main digital photography tips that elude most photographers is the direction of light.

Where is the light coming from and how will it affect my subject?

This is a question that most photographers never even consider. Light always has a direction. Sometimes you have to study the image very closely, but there will always be a direction to the light.

Consider the photo above.

I took this a few years back for a story on this young lady who ran a youth program in the inner city. There were great bold colors in her office space and it was near the Day of the Dead celebration.

Look closely and identify where the light is coming from.  Do you see it?

The light is coming from the right side of the photo (actually from a large window just out of view). It is lighting the left side of our subject’s face (we call this camera right).

I have placed her head in the upper right convergence areas of the right vertical line and the upper horizontal line and the head of the skeleton is in the upper left area of convergence. The viewer’s eyes are lead to the two heads.

The quality of the light is soft and diffused. This type of lighting is called open shade or ambient. Light that isn’t directly hitting the subject can be referred to this way. Ambient lighting is very complimentary for photographing people, but remember it has a direction to it.

So, we have ambient light that is lighting our subject from the side. We have a subject that is resting in one of our main areas of convergence and we have a nice moment for our subject.

Practice identifying the direction of light as much as possible.

It will help you as you progress as a photographer, so your photographs will begin to be crafted with a purpose, not just random snapshots.

I will be posting more digital photography tips about seeing light soon. Enjoy!

Hi and welcome to the updated Take Better Photos Now blog!