Summertime provides great opportunities to capture fun images of your children. In my home, the walls are filled with candid photos of my kids (most of them taken by me) instead of expensive artwork. It’s easy to take great photos of your children with these simple tips.
Don’t Use a Flash Outside
You don’t need it to capture a great photo. Cloudy days are better for photos than bright sunny days because the clouds diffuse the sun’s light.
Don’t Center Your Kids in the Shot
Remember the rule of thirds when taking a picture. My personal opinion is to have your child on the right side of the shot since the eye moves from left to right.
Get Close
Close-up photos look great when enlarged and framed. A solid colored background (like grass) keeps the attention on the face, not the surroundings.
Think Outside the Box
You don’t always need to capture a photo of their smiling faces. Different is good.
Get on Their Level
Kids are short, you aren’t. If you are always standing up taking photos of your children the pictures will show the same downward angle. Get to their level by sitting or laying on the ground while taking the photo.
What are some of your tips for capturing a great photo of the kids?
Those are great tips. I LOVE the shot of your child looking at the praying mantis!
love the photos
My favorite tip is to take A LOT of pictures. Just hold down the button and shoot away. You never know when you might catch a magic moment.
Good tips and great photos! The last one is priceless.
These are all great photography tips. Learning your camera settings and obeying the the rule of thirds are great starters for great photos, but the best advice I could give to capture ‘the magical moment’ is to simply take more pictures. Review them honestly and share them! Keep your eyes peeled for new ideas anytime you see pictures around you.
My favorite tips here are the rule of thirds and getting down to your kids’ level… Follow those two tips and you’ll end up with some amazing memories captured to share later!
Some great tips! I also like the tip of learning your camera’s features. A little time figuring out your camera goes a long way towards getting that perfect picture.
Wonderful photos. I like the first on the best. You must really have a good eye for photos. thank you for sharing Debbie
Like others have said take lots of pictures. AND realize that you are going to delete 60-75% of them.
The subject of the photo does not have to smile or even look at the camera for it to be a great picture.
One of my favorite pictures of my daughter is during a time when she was in the mood to pose and do silly things for the camera. The photo is a shot of her thinking about what to do next – the time between the silly stuff.
These are awesome tips. Sometimes I turn off the flash indoors too and it has a nice yellow hue.
Fantastic shots! I love the first one…. and the wee girl peeking over the back of the chair – love it! All of them, actually. And these are great tips. I agree that taking loads of photos (aren’t we so lucky to live in the age of digital cameras!) is great, because it can be the most unexpected moments that turn out brilliantly.
Thanks for this
If not using flash to fill shadows like in the first picture, make sure you have something reflective to brighten up the shadows. You would need to adjust camera exposure for the face in shadow to not have the face too dark.
The first photo either had a fill flash or a reflector to make that shot come out right.
Love these tips! I’d add – don’t forget to put the camera down and enjoy events, too. And remember to include yourself once-in-awhile. Sometimes I think my kids are going to look back at our photos and wonder what Mom looked like : )
Great tips
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Good tips! I’ve never been much of a photographer so I’ll take all the help I can get!
Thanks for the great tips. I’m a lousy photographer. I want to take better pictures of my new baby.