How To Photograph Your Baby

How To Photograph Your Baby by Melissa Doran

The February featured speaker for the meeting was none other than our own Jen Goin. She gave a presentation on how to take pictures. After a brief speech by Jen in the beginning, we watched a video by Nick Kelsh called “How To Photograph Your Baby”. The video was very informative. It gave a lot of helpful tips for taking great photos. There is also a companion book that goes with the video, “How To Photograph Your Baby”. The book is available at most book stores. The DVD is available at http://www.howtophotographyourbaby.com/dvd.

Use natural light whenever possible and turn off the flash. The flash adds too much harsh light and the natural light adds dimension to your pictures. Save the flash for snapshots. For best results set your ISO to 400 when your flash is off.

Slow down when taking the picture. Take a breath in and when pushing down the shutter button exhale. Only move your index finger when pushing down the shutter button, not your whole hand to keep your pictures from turning out blurry.

Instead of just taking one picture at a time, just keep snapping away. Since most of us now own a digital camera, you can delete the bad ones without wasting film. This is especially helpful when you are shooting a moving target like kids, babies or animals. You might have to take 100 shots, but out of those 100 you might only get 10 good pictures.

Zoom in on your subject. When you are zoomed out you get a lot of unnecessary clutter and background objects. It takes the focus off of what you are really taking a picture of.

If you’re looking to edit your photos, here are some helpful websites: http://www.piknic.com/, http://www.picasa.google.com/, http://www.lunapic.com/, http://www.photoshop.com/, http://www.fotoflexer.com/. If you have an Mac computer, IPhoto (another editing program) comes standard on your computer.

Backup your photos. Make a folder of all your favorites and save them to an external hard drive. If something happens and your computer crashes at least you have saved all your pictures. The other option is saving them to a website. There are some listed on this website. http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6451_7-6245115-1.html

Most importantly have fun!

This article originally appeared in the March/April 2010 issue of ADCAN Happenings.