My four year old has his own drop proof camera that he likes to take random pictures of around the house and not to mention the masterpieces that show up when they get there hands on the camera on my iPhone.  He’s obviously too young to start fundamentals, but nurturing your children’s creative side can be easily done through photography.  My 10 year old niece has been setting up mock photo shoots with her dolls complete with styling and posing.  Who knows if seeing those pictures years later may jumpstart a career in photography.

Summer is a great time to inspire a love of pictures in your kids.  You don’t need a fancy camera.  A simple point and shoot will do.  The idea is to make taking pictures fun.  Here’s a list of 5 things you can to do help your child fall in love with photography.

• Start a scavenger hunt. Create a list of things for your child to photograph around the neighborhood.Try to come up with items that are easy to find but not so obvious. You don’t want your child to get frustrated but you also want to encourage them to think creatively.
• Create a picture book. Teach your child to tell a story with pictures.  They can choose their favorite stuffed animal, a doll, or even a pet.  Photograph them in a variety of places doing silly things.  Let your child be the one who sets up the shot and then put all of the images together to make up a story.
• Make silly shadows. Head outside on a sunny afternoon and see what kind of fun shadows you can create.  Teach your child to ‘see the light’ and where it’s coming from.  Explain how the shadows will sometimes be taller or shorter depending on what time of day it is.

• Teach them about perspective. Your child’s experience with photography has probably always been in front of the camera. Now that they will be behind the camera, encourage them to play around with angles.  Show them how to shoot from above, get on the ground, tilt the camera, shoot from below, get in close ~ anything that helps them see things differently.

• Go on vacation. When you go on vacation you are exposed to things you don’t see on a daily basis.  Take advantage of the opportunity to record all of the details from your trip.  Have your child take pictures of their favorite people, places and things.

These are just a few examples of things you can do to encourage your pint-sized shutterbug.  Before you know it, they’ll be begging you to upgrade that point and shoot to a fancy pro model.

Happy Shooting!

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We’ve all seen those crispy clear professional photographs of beautiful fireworks displays.  But have you ever tried taking a photo of bright colorful fireworks only to be disappointed with dark, blurry, washed-out images?  Well, with the right equipment and these tips and techniques, you can take your own amazing photos of this holiday season’s fireworks.

The #1 secret behind capturing fireworks: Use a slow shutter speed, so you can record those dramatic, colorful light trails as they explode through the sky. That also means you’ll need some sort of camera support to capture a steady, unblurred shot.  The best way to stabilize your camera is with a tripod, where it can sit motionless through a long exposure. In a pinch, though, you can always try to brace yourself against a tree or a building, or hold the camera atop a monopod or walking stick.

If your point-and-shoot camera has a “fireworks mode”, go ahead and enable it — it will automatically adjust the camera’s various settings for long-exposure night photography.  For the most part, you will find that the preset fireworks mode achieves good results — it turns the flash to off, sets autofocus to infinity and exposure compensation to off, bumps down the shutter speed and aperture, and lowers the ISO.

Advanced photographers are better off going with long manual exposures for more creative control. Some point-and-shoots may lack a fireworks-specific mode, but may still allow you to manually adjust the settings.  In those cases, set the camera to its lowest ISO setting, which will minimize the camera’s tendency to generate distracting digital noise during the long exposure. You should also turn off automatic focus and set the camera’s focus to infinity, so it doesn’t search helplessly for a subject in the dark when you’re trying to start the exposure.

No manual focus control? Try using the camera’s landscape mode, which also sets the focus to infinity; the low-light environment will encourage the camera to shoot at a slow shutter speed by default.  If you can control the aperture setting on your point-and-shoot, dial in a low f/stop, somewhere between f/8 and f/16. That will help prevent overexposing the scene during the long exposure and avoid light “blooms” coming from the explosions in the sky.

And finally, choose a slow shutter speed–anywhere between 1 second and 16 seconds can work, depending upon the amount of ambient light and how many fireworks are in the sky.  The longer your exposure, the more fireworks you’ll capture at once, and the longer your light trails will be. So you might want to start with a shutter speed around 1 to 4 seconds and see if you like the results.  For really long exposures, try covering the lens with your hand or the lens cap between bursts to avoid over-exposing the picture.

Digital SLR users have an easier time, or at least more options, in picking the right settings for fireworks. Throw the camera on full manual mode, preselect your lens’s focal length (unless you’re using a prime lens that has only one focal length, the aperture will change every time you adjust the focal length), dial in a low aperture opening, and pick a slow shutter speed. Most SLRs also have a “bulb” mode, which leaves the shutter open for as long as you hold down the shutter release. You can use it to take exposures as much as 30 seconds long. If you go for super-long exposures, you might want to cover the lens between fireworks.

I hope this helps you to achieve some fantastic fireworks pictures this holiday!

Happy Shooting!

The post Shooting Fireworks | erika snow photography appeared first on Arizona Mama.

I’ve found the best way to encourage fathers to have natural candid moments with their children in front of the lens is to take time to explain your style and point of view.  To put him at ease, I ask him to live without his cell phone for a few minutes, and I use a little humor and promise to take no more than 15 minutes of his time.  Many dads love the techy side of photography so we talk about camera equipment to break the ice.  If your guy is a new dad he might not know yet how to hold the infant without looking awkward, so make sure they are relaxed with their new baby in arms.  Sitting down helps or relating the baby to a football.  You hold the two very similar.  With older children, dads are often distracted by how the child is behaving and they forget to relax, look at the camera, and interact affectionately with the child.  Most men appreciate some guidance on what they should be doing.  I give a bit of reassuring direction by saying something like,  ”I’ll worry about getting good shots of little Jack, you just sit back, relax and look good!”

Encourage fathers to play with their children, even wrestle with them and be hands on to get great moments to capture.  Dads often sigh with relief when they find out I’m not expecting them to sit still and pose the whole time, and find they not only enjoy our session, but also love the finished photos.

Happy Shooting!

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1.  Shoot with subject’s backs to the sun as much as possible

2. Do not take the picture if you can see shadows in the eyes of your subject with your naked eye.  The camera will enhance the shadows and voila! you have a racoon face for a child.  You can’t fix it in Photoshop, so don’t even try.  Always make sure your lighting is right in the eyes before you ever click the shutter.  Turn that face in either direction until you see those gnarly shadows disappear.

3. Watch out for shiny things in your surroundings that throw back weird reflections on your subject.

4.  Be aware of what’s behind your subject. If your subject is in shade, but behind him is a fiercely bright background, don’t take the picture.  Reasons?  a. It’s difficult for your camera to expose correctly in that situation and b. you’ll turn to your beloved photoshop to try and fix it and c. that will make you crazy, and d. a bright, overexposed background takes away from the beauty of the subject.

5. If any part of your subject’s face is in the sun (like the tip of the nose) while the rest is in shade, don’t take the picture.  Again, it’s nearly impossible to get the face exposed properly in this case just because your camera’s meter can be easily thrown off by super-bright parts of a scene and super dark parts as well.

6. Use anything, and I mean anything you can get your hands on to block harsh sun out of a face.  Things I’ve used in the past:

• a reflector
• a poor innocent bystander
• my camera bag
• my long hair 
(a bit tricky)
• the dad of whatever family we’re photographing
• a take-out container  (quite comical)

These are just my rules of thumb.  Rules I try to follow to avoid that feeling you get when you notice the harsh light just ain’t working for you.  The most important rule: Light is either there, or it’s not.  You’ll save yourself a lot of grief if you chant that to yourself a few times.  There’s nothing more exciting than realizing you can finally “see the light”… and that takes practice.

Look at the eyes.  The eyes say it all.  If there is soft, lovely light in the eyes- you’ve got yourself a purdy picture.

Happy Shooting!

The post How to take a picture outside in the summer | erika snow photography appeared first on Arizona Mama.

The other key to getting what you want in focus is being able to CHOOSE your focal point.  The picture below was taken with my iPhone.  Although it is much loved it did not do a very good job at guessing what I wanted in focus.  If you look closely you will see that the background and especially the obscure man pushing a stroller is more in focus then my darling boys.  Yes, focus is important.

Happy Shooting!

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