5 Ways to Improve Your Family Snapshots!

I am SO excited to share my first tutorial with everyone!!! This is a tutorial on 5 ways to instantly improve your family snapshots! I have been wanting to blog about photography tips and tricks FOREVER and I am so glad I finally got the chance! I hope this helps your daily pictures! Those beautiful, candid shots are moments in time that you will never get back…and they deserved to be beautifully captured!

Feel free to comment and ask more questions :) Enjoy!

1. Find GREAT light!

You may have heard this before…and shortly after may have asked yourself, “What the HECK is great light?!?!” I know this because I used to ask myself that very question…haha. 

Here are some ways you can identify Great Light:

NO direct sun! This means if you want to shoot some cute pictures of your kids between about 9 am to 6pm you have a problem….so what can you do?

Try to find a shaded area…under a tree, against a house (one side of your house MUST be shaded!) or underneath a porch are all great options! 

These two pictures below are literally 2 STEPS away from each other! The only thing I did different is made them step under the porch and turn around! HUGE difference :)

2. Watch the Sun!

If you HAVE to take a picture in “harsh light” (sun high in the sky) then make sure the sun is BEHIND your subject! You may have to pop the flash because their faces will probably be  shadowed. But it will look SO much better than half of their faces glowing :) 

You can see below the sun is hitting the back of his head :) which means his body was a slightly in the shadows so I popped a little flash.

3. Compose Carefully

My poor Mom. I fuss at her all the time for this very problem! We are all dressed up for a night out and I hand her my camera for a quick snapshot…..she hands it back to me and I discover she captured the top half of our bodies and…….sky….a tree….clouds, clouds and more clouds!!! So next time you take group pictures, LOOK! Really look at your subjects and take a moment to decide how this would look best in your frame :) For instance, if you are taking a group of 4+ people you will probably have to back away a pretty good distance! So make sure you get all their limbs in the picture (i.e. FEET!). Take an extra few seconds to make Kim move closer to Kelsey and make have them put their arms around each other :) It will make all the difference in your pictures if you give yourself a half second to “set it up”!

I did not go out and shoot this example…haha, I happened to have this on hand! You can see the instant difference :)

4. Don’t be afraid to POP your flash!

So often people tell me that my camera is AMAZING, because none of my pictures are blurry! But actually the reason for “blur” is a lack of LIGHT! Your camera is doing it’s best to let in light…which results in blurry images when the room is dark. The best remedy for this problem is to ADD LIGHT! Open the curtains, turn on more lights or pop your FLASH are the best fixes. It is very rare that I DON’T need a flash indoors…unless I break out the really cool equipment :) So an easy rule to follow is always POP the flash indoors! 

5. LEARN your camera!

Whether you have an iPhone or a fancy DSLR, learning your camera and what it’s capable of is the MOST important thing :) You could spend $100 or $500 on a camera and it would be hard to tell the difference if you are shooting in AUTO with both! I know that seems hard to believe! But it is absolutely true. So even though it is super boring….yes, go READ your MANUAL! 

Just a quick note, both of the previous examples were shot with the exact same camera…and let me tell you that camera is a BEAST! I shoot all my weddings with it and I have never shot with a better camera! But again…if you don’t have good light your pictures will look terrible no matter how awesome your camera is :)

Happy Shooting!! :)