Kidding Around part 3

Alaina with Doe-doe.

I know, I have cute nieces and nephews. It's a curse, but someone has to photograph them.

We were all six years old once - time is short and there's only so much time to play in a given day. So, really, Mom and Dad, who has time for the camera? I have a slight bit of an advantage, because I'm "Uncle Pete" (or in Lily-Bug's case "Uh-oh Pete") and I seem to be a magnet for their attention.

Here's some tips for you while you take pictures of your little minions.

1: Know your camera. I've played with each of the cameras I own enough so that when I grab one, its settings and controls are second nature to me. If you're a beginner here's a few things to get you started.
       - Use "auto" mode, the camera will change the settings for you.
       - Make sure you know how to turn your camera on at quick notice.
       - Be sure you always know how much battery power you have.
       - Also know how much space you have available, nothing is worse than seeing that "card full" icon when you are in the middle of taking pictures.
       - Clear your card frequently, and keep your pictures organized in your computer. (I'll have to do a blog on that.)  
 
2: Take pictures while your kids are playing, reading or not paying attention to the camera. This works great if you have a shy child, or even for adults. So often when we realize that there's a camera on us we put on fake smiles or try to hide away from the lens. The main goal when I'm taking pictures is to disappear, let your subject forget you're even there. Much to the annoyance to my family, the best way I have found to do this is take a ton of pictures when we're together, like these pictures from vacation. After the first day, they get use to the snap of the camera and learn to ignore me.

3: But there's a trade off; what do you do when you take a good picture but it's too dark? - This is a great question, each of the pictures in today's blog where either under exposed or the lighting was bad. This is where Photoshop or some picture editing software comes in handy.

Not everyone wants to invest the money or the time to learn Photoshop, which if understandable. However if you are looking for a free, user friendly, option I would recommend a program called "Photoscape" if you click on the link it will take you to a page for a free download.

Below is one example of a picture, before and after, that was taken as the sun was setting. I felt the picture was too blue, and was loosing the kids faces in the shadows. With a few adjustments I was able to take the cool tones of sunset and make it feel more like the warm summer afternoon that it really was. In the end, I was able to salvage a picture that would have otherwise just been nice to look at, but not really useable. So don't despair if you have taken a picture that you like, but just isn't fully what you want, there are ways of changing it.

In a future blog I will break down the steps I took to correct this picture.  

Before

After