I firmly believe you should take a lot of everyday photos of your family in “real life.” Professional portraits are valuable, but those “everyday” photos can really bring back some memories you and your family have made. Some of these photos though might have some issues that may detract from your overall enjoyment of them later. You me be thinking, “Wow, I wish I could see his face better, or I wish he wasn’t so blurry.” So I am going to incorporate a category of Photo Tips to share with you. These will help you take some better snapshots of you family.
This tip is about “getting in close.” This will help your photos go from “So-so” to “Love it!” in no time. When taking photos, we tend to include a lot of background that is distracting from the focal point of the photo- the child.This especially can happen when we are hurriedly snapping photos just “trying to get the shot.” Believe me, I know how fast these kiddos can move around. They could tire even the most trained sprint runner!
To correct this, we have two options.
- Get in closer while taking the photo.
- Crop the photo in our photo editing software afterwards.
Get in Closer While Taking the Photo
To do this, you can use your zoom on your camera. The amount of zoom will vary depending on you camera. Some cameras can zoom up to 3x while others can zoom up to 20x or more on a point and shoot type of camera. If you are using a DSLR, the amount of zoom available to you will depend on the lens you have attached to your camera body. Many entry level DSLR’s come with a kit lens that is 18mm-55mm which equates to about a 3x zoom.
If you find that your zoom range isn’t enough for your photo, you will have to “zoom with your feet.” This means physically getting closer to your child (or photo subject). II realize that sometimes this is not possible though. Our child may be involved in an activity and if we get closer, we will distract them and lose the moment. If it comes to that, go ahead and take the photo. Better to have this photo than no photo at all. You can use option 2 to get in closer.
Crop the Photo with Photo-Editing Software
Most cameras these days come with at least a very basic photo editing software. If yours did not, there are all kids of editing software available online or at low cost. My personal choice of software is Photoshop. There are two versions available, the full version and Elements. I use the full version, but Photoshop Elements is aimed toward consumers and is very affordable when compared to the cost of the full version. And it probably has most of the features you will ever need for everyday photo editing.
Other photo editing options are Picasa, PicMonkey, or GIMP. GIMP is layer based photo editing program, similar to Photoshop in ways, but completely free. Just do a google search for “free photo editing software” and you will see tons of choices.
Open your software and then open your photo. You can use the crop tool in your software to get in close on the image to make it more interesting and bring the focus in to your subject.
In the example below, I took a photo of my daughter in my driveway as the sun was setting. I noticed her holding her dress up to her face and I thought it was so touching. So I did what most people do, I quickly snapped a picture. Not really paying attention to the background. However, I also captured part of my husband. While I dearly love my husband, I did not necessarily want him in the photo. (Poor guy!) And it was hard to really see the expression on my daughter’s face.
Cute photo of my daughter. But it also includes my husband and I can’t really see her expression.
Once I cropped the photo in Photoshop, I was able to get in close, get rid of the background distractions and really see the expression I wanted to capture.
This is much better. The photo includes only my daughter and I can now see her expression much better.
The second photo looks much better and evokes more emotion. In short, it is much more compelling. So give this easy tip a try to love your photos more. Just get in close, whether in camera while you are taking the photo or afterwards in photo editing software.
Keep taking those photos and capturing those memories! 🙂
