How To Get Good Pictures of Your Kids

This is my daughter Josephine. These photos were taken one day after I picked her up from preschool. Our tomato plants had been going nuts and I had noticed that our first red ones were ready for picking, so out came the camera.

Josephine, for the most part, likes having her picture taken, but I don't think that this happened by accident. I've been photographing kids professionally since well before she was born and I've watched how kids develop this awful grimace when told to smile. They don't really know how to smile on command, but they try, and it's often not the look you want for a photograph. Also, if they are trained well, that's the only look they do when you point the camera at them. Mostly what I've learned from photographing kids is that they don't take direction, so you need to be intuitive, patient and fast when taking their picture.

DON'T SAY SMILE

So, with Josephine, instead of saying, 'smile' when I'm taking her picture, I think of something to say that will make her smile, or pull my head away from the camera and make a silly face at her. Often I tell her there are turtles inside the lens (although she's getting too old to fall for that one). This is a good trick for younger kids though, they often stop and look in the lens just long enough for you to snap off a few images. If you are close enough, you can reach out and give them a little tickle. I think that doing things like this has made it fun for Josephine to get her picture taken, and so when she sees the camera, she already knows we're going to have some fun.

WAIT

What you want to capture is beyond just a smile, but a little bit of their personality. Wait to see what they will do for you. Even if you think a photo won't be a good one, in the age of digital, why not keep taking them, just to see? What you are waiting for is the break in that action, for that moment when they are the most natural and unposed.

GEAR

If you are lucky enough to have a DSLR, you should have a fast lens. When I say fast I'm referring to the biggest lens opening that your lens has. So look on your lens, does it say 2.8, 4 or 5.6? What is best is 2.8 or better yet, 1.8 (the smaller numbers actually refer to bigger lens openings, that is because there is supposed to be a one over these numbers). If you have a wide aperture on your lens (a 2.8 or 1.8) it makes it much easier for your camera to focus. A lot of zooms don't have very wide apertures, so they are slow with focusing, and it makes it harder to capture the quick movements of children. There are fixed lens that are very fast and also pretty cheap. Try a 50mm 1.8, they usually run about $80 and you can shoot with them in low light with out a flash.

If you don't have a DSL, look in your instruction manual and see if you have a high speed shooting mode that will take multiple exposures quickly. Shoot a lot, and delete the bad ones.

Happy picture taking!

See the Kids Portfolio at http://www.smcintyre.com/

Hill Country Getaway!

I finally got out of Austin! A nice little jaunt to the country side. My friends arranged a girls trip to the Hill Country over Mother's Day weekend. We stayed at a house in Center Point, a small town on the Guadalupe River.

The weekend was all about relaxation, laughing, and also FOOD. Mary Louise Butters (of Butters Brownies) was along with us for the weekend and her family has a ranch nearby. We were invited to the Ranch for dinner, and what a treat! This family loves it's food-smoked a pig for the occasion! We also had skillet cornbread, roasted turkey, two kinds of cole slaw, rosemary roasted potatoes, pound cake with berries and cream for dessert. We ate out on their patio which has amazing views, overlooking the valley.

The next day I meandered home, stopping here and there to take photos. I've always wanted to stop and photograph those hay bales! It was Mothers Day, and a perfect way to spend it was wandering around in a field in the middle of the country. Why don't I do this more?

See more photos at http://www.smcintyre.com/

Austin Monthly Style Shoot

I pitched a story to Austin Monthly in April for a style shoot. The concept I pitched was for how the photos should look and a rough idea of what the models might be wearing. I had wanted the shots to be all outside, showing the beauty of early spring. The crew at Austin Monthly does not want to travel far, so I scouted all over the city for wild places of beauty-places that would you would think were out in the country (which there are many).

The weather was not looking good though, it was dark, dark, dark, and rain seemed imminent. So I began to look at indoor spaces to shoot in for a back up.  I found this cabin near lake Travis that looked like it could be a good back drop, went out there and shot a lot of potential backgrounds and matched them up with a rough shot list I had put together. On the day of the shoot it gets very hectic; getting in six shots between the hours of 9-5 with out an assistant can be challenging, (especially when you have to factor in time for hair and make up and choosing clothing) so I was really glad I had done a lot of prep work. The magazine came out two weeks ago and the spread looks great.

See the layouts in the InPrint Portfolio http://www.smcintyre.com/