Taking Better Family Photos in 4 Steps

A VERY Beginner Tutorial on Improving Photography

Step 1: Learning to use light (even on Auto)

I've had a tough time working with light over the years. I'll show some photos of my progress through the years. I warn you, some of it is bad.

Though this one is adorable. It's not good. This was taken in 2010 when I thought I needed a flash indoors. It was taken on auto. I only though about composition (which is also important). This is a photo of my handsome cousin.

This was taken of a friend's baby at the beginning of 2012. It was my first attempt at creating my own light. I believed I used a clip-on light from Lowe's, with a light bulb that I also purchased from Lowe's. It was cheap, but my camera isn't super expensive and cannot handle super high ISO numbers. 

This photo was taken a few months later using the same setup. It's better, but I really needed better light. I also needed to know how to use it. Reflectors would have helped. Btw, this was after I edited out the hand holding up her chin (yeah, I needed more practice posing too).

This was my first time using mono lights. It wasn't too bad. I did practice beforehand, but not for keeps. This was 2012.

I like this one. I was really trying to get it right. This is the same handsome boy from the first photo. This was in 2013.

This was taken at a friend's wedding in 2013. To be fair, the only way to get the rainbow in the background was to face the light. It's not too bad, and the light was not super harsh.

A picture taken about a week ago. I really love this one and I actually felt like I knew what I was doing (with the camera, posing is still tough).

I showed you all of those pictures to show you that my photos did not always look like the ones that I post today. Even my pictures now are far from perfect, and I'm always looking to improve. But since I have improved, I wanted to share my progress and help you to struggle less than I did when you're learning how to take pictures, and hopefully you'll get better faster.

I'm going to say this again. I am not a professional. I feel like the most important part of a photograph, particularly a portrait, is light. Different lighting can completely change a photograph. It is probably best to start with natural light because it is continuous, making it easier to see what the photograph will look like before shooting. This will give you the opportunity to learn what light from different directions, and of different levels of being diffused (...?) look like.   

When working with outdoor light:
1. I feel like the first thing you need to know is what kind of light you've got. Is it harsh and directional or soft and diffused? Where is the source? This will help you determine what settings you need to use on your camera and what your photo will look like. Determine the sun's position in the sky. If it is strait overhead (noon-3pm in the summer), you will likely want to seek shade. If it is cloudy, you'll want to warm up the photo. Sunset and sunrise are the best times to take a photograph. The sun in low in the sky and casts a beautiful light on your subjects.

2. Determine what you want the photo to look like. If you want harsh, dramatic shadows, wait until a day with very few clouds in the sky. Look at the subject to see what the light looks like on his/her face. If one side is much brighter than the other, the model may need to turn to face, or turn away from, the light.

3. Choose your camera settings. I'll explain more about camera settings in a future post in this series, but one thing you need to know that is important to post now is to determine which metering mode is appropriate for the light that you're stuck with. I almost always use spot metering. I just like it better and I usually only care if the subject is properly exposed. If you're confused about what metering modes are and don't know how to change them, I'll give a short tutorial.

(Break for tutorial (skip this if you already have a basic understanding of metering): Here is what it looks like on the top of my trusted Nikon D90.

The dot inside the rectangle below the number 90 shows that I am using spot metering.

To change this on my camera, I simply have to press and hold down the button directly under the word off and twist the dial on the back of the camera. There are two other types of metering on my camera, center weighted (the icon will change to something like looks like parentheses around the spot), and matrix (the icon will change to a picture that looks like the button below the word off). I sometimes use matrix metering if I want an entire photograph to be properly exposed, but spot metering is my favorite. It allows me to make a single spot of the photograph a priority for being exposed properly. 

The icon below the metering icon is the thing that tells you where your camera is going to focus when it's set to auto-focus (I don't know all of the technical names for these things). Use the arrows to move it around until it covers the spot you want it to focus on. This will tell the spot metering where to meter. (Note: sometimes you have to ignore the meter altogether because you know better than it does).

End of tutorial)

4. Get creative. You don't need great light to take a great photograph. It might not look the way you wanted it to look, but if you're creative you can make it something totally different.

This photo shows that you barely need any light at all to take an interesting photograph.

More talk about just using auto in the next post. I'll continue talking about light. Let me know in the comments if you would like to see something different. Thanks for reading!