Family Time

I know first hand how difficult it can be to get a great photo of your whole family together. Since I am the photographer in my house, I have a tonne of photos of Maelle and my husband, but few of the three of us together.  So when a couple of my friends and family members asked me to take their family photos, I was happy to help out. How did my family photo shoots go? Let's start with the not-so-great part. I had rather dismal success getting a classic family portrait with everyone looking at the camera and with everyone smiling. After four family sessions,  I am batting 250 (not bad for baseball, but not what I am striving for in photography):

Thankfully I had better luck capturing other photos, including a mix of mom or dad with child, individual kid shots and candid family pics. I found it helpful to have in mind a couple ideas of photos that I wanted capture (e.g. child on dad's shoulders, everyone holding hands, etc. Pinterest is great for inspiration). I am also learning more and more about posing (check out some great tips here). Take a look at my favourite family photos so far:

Up high, down low

Over the past couple of months, I've come across quite a few good tips for photographing kids. Get in close. Use a fast shutter speed with  quick moving toddlers. Engage with older kids by asking them questions or telling jokes to avoid cliche "cheesy" smiles. And finally get down low.  This last piece of advice is a bit of a departure from the natural tendency to take a photo at your own level. By crouching down very low to take pictures at a child's eye level, you're able to capture the world through their eyes.  I've employed this tip quite a bit (with the unfortunate side effect of some grass stains from lying completely down).  Here are a couple of my favourite eye level pictures:

That said, I've also realized this perspective isn't the only way to snap a great photo. By varying the angle from which I shoot, I can capture a wide range of interesting pictures. Some of my favourite pictures of Maelle are taken from a bird's eye or "way up high" angle. These shots sometimes require me to hold my camera up above my head or hop up onto a chair. This unexpected vantage point can add a sense of vulnerability to the photo or draw your attention to a child's bright eyes.

I've also experimented with shooting pictures from a low-to-high angle, to less success. This perspective is a little more tricky to get right. For adults it often just flat out doesn't work: you end up with unflattering shots with double chins or close up views of nostrils, or you make the legs and lower part of their body look larger than the upper body. But for babies  it can sometimes work by making the subject appear a bit larger than life:

Before and after

Computers have never been my best friend. I loathe learning new software, have lost more than a few documents by forgetting to save and know far fewer keyboard shortcuts than I am prepared to admit. So when I realized that the second photography course from George Brown College was focused on editing photos, I wasn't exactly enthused. Learning how to take photos was overwhelming enough without having to worry about editing them. But being able to edit photos is a key part of the photographer's toolkit.  As much as I strive to "get it right in camera" there are inevitably times when I need to make edits after the fact.

Photo editing software (like Photoshop, Lightroom, Aperture or any other of the dozens of other programs) can do some pretty amazing things. It can brighten an overly dark photo, bring out details in shadow areas or highlights, correct colour issues, remove unwanted objects, etc. That said, you need to be careful. There's a fine line between improving something and making it look unnatural or overdone. Take a look at Faith Hill's arm, eyes and back on the cover of Redbook (scroll down to the flashing picture / the second magazine cover). 

Thankfully the flabbiness of babies' arms is never a problem to correct;) After taking the course and reading all 500 pages of The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 Book for Digital Photographers, I am starting to get the hang of it. However there are still times I make a tonne of edits only to realize it looks worse than the original and have to start over.

Here's a couple before and after photos of my friend Steph's super cute newborn, Zoe.

In the after photo below I removed a bit of the redness from Zoe's skin by adjusting the Hue, Saturation and Luminance of the red in the photo. These changes made the blanket a bit greenish, so I adjusted this colour too.

With many cameras there's a black and white setting but I much prefer to shoot in colour and change to black and white after the fact for maximum flexibility. For many photos I still have no idea exactly why I prefer it in black and white (probably a subject for a future post!) but for this one I think the back and white draws your eyes to Zoe's adorable features. 

In the after photo I brought down the clarity and sharpness a bit to soften the skin. I also removed some of the redness from the skin and cropped the photo for a closer focus on Zoe's face. 

The changes I made below were fairly subtle. The original picture was underexposed (too dark) so I increased the exposure to brighten it up and also adjusted the Highlights and Shadows to recover detail in those two areas. 

Aloha Hawaii

Travel photography has always been my favourite type of photography (although photographing little ones is now a close second). New sights, colours, architecture, food, landscapes and people offer endless subjects for photos. So it was no surprise that I took over a thousand pictures on our recent trip to the Hawaiian islands of Kauai and Maui. But since no one (not even my super supportive and always interested parents) wants to look through a thousand pictures, I had to narrow them down to the best of the bunch.

While paring down photos to a more manageable set is never my favourite task, I find the following tips helpful to keep in mind:

1. Keep a sufficient mix to tell the story of your trip (e.g. culture, landscape, architecture, places you stayed, etc). 
2. Even though a photo might not be technically perfect, it's a keeper if it captures a unique moment or makes you remember something truly special.
3. There is no need to have 29 different photos of the same beautiful sunset (...or building or flower, etc.). Pick a couple of the best and move on.
4. Less is often more when posting photos online, printing or showing to friends and family. Review, delete the weakest photos and flag your favourites. Repeat. And repeat again. And yet again.

Take a look at my Hawaiian favourites!