The secret of photographing your kids

Children can be the best subjects when taking photos because they are uninhibited and not self conscious.
Everytime I take a photo of my son I am trying to get that shot for his 21st birthday. Most photos of children I have seen are shot from above. Just a few things here to get from good to great photos.

Great photo but nothing to strike behind him.

The secret to a great photo of children is getting down to their level and try to see the world through their eyes. Getting down to their level allows you to gain more trust as you are not being tall and intimadating, this makes them more trusting of you and you can photograph them in a more candid way than a posed shot.
Here is an example of the photo I am talking about.

Capturing them just having a great time is magic.

Try to use the general rules of photography use the 3rds rule, create great depth of field and experiement.  Here is a link to Canon Australia's Tutorial on Basic Composition.

This one I like as my Son is exploring his way around.

http://www.canon.com.au/worldofeos/learn/getting-started/Basic-composition.aspx


Remember to take lots and lots of photos! You'll need to crack a few eggs to make an omelette!

How do I use my Flash?

Cameras react to light to create a photo, and through my journey of photography I have grown to love flash photography and how it can change a photo.

Flash photography using a speedlight will give more natural colour tones, hide shadows and bring out detail that was hiding.

A great example of what a flash can do is to fill in the light needed if you are taking a photo of someone with light behind them, like the sun, without flash you get a great silhouette. If you want to get the subjects facial detail you can use fill light to do this.

Bounce flash is a great way to eliminate shadows, especially with a wall close behind someone. Instead of the shadow falling directly behind the subject, the flash is seemingly eliminated by changing where the shadow falls.

By bouncing the flash on a 45 degree angle the shadow drops closer to the ground and out of the shot. Making the photo look more 3D, give the subject better colour tone and look more natural.

What to look for with the new Warranty Laws

Great news for consumers is that warranty laws have been beefed up and you have a lot more rights. Still in my humble opinion I recommend Extended Warranty.

As retailers and manufacturers try to work out exactly what the new laws mean to you and them a few things are clear, you are protected by an expected period of time. An expected period of time is unclear to what that means, but at least if you are a month out of warranty you can seek assistance from your manufacturer.

If you check your terms and conditions of an extended warranty a good cover will give you peace of mind with the following options. First and foremost your Extended Warranty should cover things like wear and tear that your normal warranty will not cover, Unlimited repairs so that you are never out of pocket on parts and labour, new for old cover so if the repair is uneconomical you will have a replacement with a new equivalent model, finally a lemon policy so if there is the same repair 3 times you have a replacement model.

The industry average for a repair is anywhere between $160 and $300. Most Extended Warranties cost less than a repair and thus a great investment to protect your purchase. 

I recommend an extended warranty for any purchase you make, no one likes to throw away something that cost them thousands of dollars because it would cost too much to repair. I'd just like to thank Daniel Bell for the inspiration to write this article.

That lens is naked! Why UV Filtrers are important.

A UV Filter is a necesscity for any lens. From the first thing they do is protect your lens from dirt, grit, fingerprints, scratches and dust. Thebadcam says that it is against my religion not to have a UV filter on a lens.
The best insurance you can get for your lens is a filter, here is an example of one of my customer's UV filter.

A cracked UV Filter

She was very happy that all it was going to cost her was a new filter instead of replacing a whole lens.

Another great benefit of UV is that the filter reduces the UV haze in your shot, improving your results particularly near the ocean.

Break the Rules! How to bend photography rules to make amazing photos.

There are many rules and guides in photography to help everyone learn to take a pleasing shot. Once we learn these rules and get good at them then we can learn to break the rules and become creative.

Examples of broken rules are everywhere, Christopher Columbus broke the rule that the earth was flat, Wright brothers broke the rule that people could not fly. Once we master the basics of photography we can learn to reshape these rules to our world to tell the story we want.

With this photo of my brother, landscape shots are meant to be square, I wanted an Epic feel to the shot. I slanted the photo, got down low and really captured the essence of what he is thinking.

Tristan at Lake George

Find a good mentor that you can run ideas past and work together on projects to push your boundaries.

Is more megapixels better?

Less is more, so goes the saying.

I have spoken with sign-writers and graphic designers who have explained to me that megapixels are only useful when you want to blow up large sizes. So we need to pick a camera not on the size of megapixels.

As a general idea sizes can be reached from:

• 2MP – 6x4
• 2.1MP – 1920x1080 TV Screen Resolution
• 5MP – A4 piece of paper
• 10MP – Poster Size or 20”x30”

Science is bringing us more megapixels and most entry level cameras have lots of megapixels. Enthusiast level cameras tend to have less, example Canon s95 has 10MP which is a great high detail camera for any photography lover.  Nikon’s new 1 system has 10.1MP on their new Mirrorless Interchangeable Cameras. Olympus’ XZ-1 has 10MP also and has one of the most amazing macro functions in a compact camera.

Olympus XZ-1

If your salesperson talks about needing high megapixels for quality, then you can see they need to do more research. Hope this helps.

Helping Kids to Photograph their Story

Kids love playing with what we are playing with, it is how they learn. I have seen too many parents buy a 'cheap' camera for their children because of the fear they'll break it. 
Children have a great "eye" for photographing the world as they see it, giving them a cheap camera sometimes can limit tell the story they want to share. I know I don't want to give my boy an expensive camera, he could break it or lose it, so what do we do?
I have been recommending Tough cameras to parents for a long time, most are shock proof, waterproof, dust and freeze proof.

Olympus TG-820 - photo from www.olympus.com.au 

There are several on the market that you can choose. All of them take a great photo and now take decent movies to tell the best stories. Olympus, Nikon, Panasonic, Canon, Fujifilm, Pentax just to name a few. Each has their own features and fit most niches.
Now you can give your young ones something to tell great stories and not worry about them breaking it. From swimming to running through muddy puddles, kids get to be kids and share their story. 
Just imagine the DVDs you can send to their grandparents for Christmas.