Learning how to use a camera can be frustrating and time consuming, but if you understand how to work your camera using the manual settings you’ll find it much easier to take pictures when it’s on auto. When the camera is on auto it makes exposure settings according to how much light is coming into the lens, and even though cameras these days are very clever they can’t cope with every situation. You will often need to take control yourself, and with digital cameras you can tell whether your manual adjustment has made a difference.

You don’t always need to set your camera to ‘full manual setting’ to make changes to the camera auto settings, I’ll talk about this at the end of this piece but first I need to get the tech stuff out of they way.

Aperture Size.
The size of the aperture determines how much light passes through your lens, large apertures let more light pass through, small apertures let less light pass through.
Aperture settings are referred to as f-stops, or f-numbers, expressed as a fraction, such as f/22. However, to save space, f-numbers are often denoted by just their denominator, such as 22. Note, the larger the f-number, the smaller the relative aperture.
On a manual camera, f-numbers are usually adjusted with a ring outside your lens barrel. A typical sequence of f-numbers on a camera run, from largest to smallest aperture: 1.8, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22.
The difference between each f-number is twice the amount of light. So, aperture setting f/16 lets in twice as much light as f/22.
The aperture size determines the depth of field, or zone of sharp focus, that surounds your subject: whereas small apertures (high f-numbers) produce a long depth of field, large apertures (small f-numbers) produce a short depth of field. Therefore, if you’re taking a picture of a landscape, and you want both foreground and background to be in focus, use a small aperture such as f/16. On the other hand, if you’re taking a picture of a friend or family member, and you want to place more emphasis on them by blurring the background, use a large aperture such as f/4.    

Shutter Speed.
Release the shutter, you will see the aperture momentarily open for the length of time set by the shutter speed.
The shutter speed determines how long your film/digital sensor is exposed to light passing through the aperture: the slower the shutter speed, the longer the shutter remains open, the more light reaches your film/digital sensor. So, both aperture size and shutter speed determine the final exposure of your picture.
Like f-numbers, shutter speeds are expressed as a fraction, such as 1/60 second. However, to save space, shutter speeds are often denoted by just their denominator, such as 60. The larger the shutter speed number, the shorter the amount of time your film/digital sensor is exposed to light.
On manual cameras, the shutter speed is usually adjusted by a circular control knob on top of the camera. A typical sequence of shutter speeds on a camera run, from slowest to fastest: 1, 2, 4, 8, 15, 30, 60, 125, 250, 500, 1000.
The shutter speed determines the amount of motion blur a moving object will have in your final picture. Use a fast shutter speed (such as 1/500 sec) to freeze fast moving objects in their trajectory, or use a slow shutter speed (such as 1/2 sec) to illustrate movement by creating motion blur.
Like f-numbers, the difference between each shutter speed setting is twice the amount of light. For example, shutter speed 1/60 sec lets in twice as much light as 1/125 sec.
Due to the doubling/halving nature of both aperture and shutter settings, closing the aperture one stop (halving the light) while simultaneously decreasing the shutter speed by one setting (doubling the light) produces no effective change in the amount of light reaching your film/digital sensor. The same is true for closing the aperture two stops while decreasing the shutter speed by two settings. This means there are several aperture and shutter settings which produce the same overall exposure of your final picture. For example, the combination f/4 and 1/60 sec produces the same overall exposure as f/2.8 and 1/125 sec, or f/5.6 and 1/30 sec. This is not to say these settings will produce the same final picture since the combination you choose will determine the depth of field surrounding your subject (aperture size) and the amount of motion blur of moving objects (shutter speed).

Exposure Meter.
Most camera light meters estimate the exposure of your final snapshot by a “center-weighted” averaging algorithm, more sophisticated DSLR cameras can also meter ‘Spot” or very small parts of the subject, and ‘Evaluative’ which can cope with backlit subjects.
One condition that often “fools” the light meter is when a subject is backlit or the sun is shining behind your subject. You can tell if the meter has been fooled if your subject is underexposed.
For the same reason, a dark or black object occupying the center of the viewfinder will also “fool” the light meter. You can tell here if the meter has been fooled if your subject is overexposed.
Objects of average light intensity are grey stone, weathered wood, foliage or dark skin.

How to fix over or underexposure.
There are a number of techniques you can use to fix over or under exposure. There are two I use most often.
1. If you have your camera set to Av (aperture priority) or Tv (speed or time priority) you can take control yourself quickly by telling your camera to overexpose or underexpose by moving the exposure slider on your LCD panel to plus or minus. Normally one or two stops will fix your image. If your camera is set to Av you will adjust the shutter speed, if it is set to Tv you will adjust the aperture.

2. Set your camera to manual. Now you have control over both aperture and shutter speed. The camera’s light meter will still tell you what it thinks the ideal exposure should be, and as you adjust both the speed and the aperture the camera will tell you whether you are over or underexposing. When you first try this out it’s a good idea to put your camera on a tripod as there are so many things to think about, and if the camera is not moving around you’ll see how your adjustments are affecting your image.

Practice makes perfect and as usual my advice is to take lots and lots of pictures, be adventurous, and don’t worry if you find it confusing to begin with.

The key to understanding how a camera works is to understand the relationship between shutter speed, aperture and ISO.

One metaphor often used is to imagine your camera is like a window with shutters that open and close. Aperture is the size of the window. If it’s bigger more light gets through and the room is brighter. Shutter Speed is the amount of time that the shutters of the window are open. The longer you leave them open the more that comes in.
Now imagine that you’re inside the room and are wearing sunglasses, your eyes become desensitized to the light that comes in (it’s like a low ISO).There are a number of ways of increasing the amount of light in the room, or at least how much it seems that there is. You could increase the time that the shutters are open (decrease shutter speed), you could increase the size of the window (increase aperture) or you could take off your sunglasses (make the ISO larger).

How does your camera know what the perfect exposure is? Your camera is pre programmed by the manufacturer to let an exact amount of light in for the perfect exposure, which is 18% of the light reflected form a grey surface.

Shutter Speed:
Shutter speed is measured in seconds – or in most cases fractions of seconds. The bigger the denominator the faster the speed (ie1/1000 is much faster than 1/30).
In most cases you’ll probably be using shutter speeds of 1/60th of a second or faster. This is because anything slower than this is very difficult to use without getting camera shake. Camera shake is when your camera is moving while the shutter is open and results in blur in your photos.
If you’re using a slow shutter speed (anything slower than 1/60) you will need to either use a tripod or some some type of image stabilization (more and more cameras are coming with this built in).

Shutter speeds available to you on your camera will usually double (approximately) with each setting. As a result you’ll usually have the options for the following shutter speeds – 1/500, 1/250, 1/125, 1/60, 1/30, 1/15, 1/8 etc. This ‘doubling’ is handy to keep in mind as aperture settings also double the amount of light that is let in – as a result increasing shutter speed by one stop and decreasing aperture by one stop should give you similar exposure levels.

Some cameras also give you the option for very slow shutter speeds that are not fractions of seconds but are measured in seconds (for example 1 second, 10 seconds, 30 seconds etc). These are used in very low light situations, when you’re going after special effects and/or when you’re trying to capture a lot of movement in a shot). Some cameras also give you the option to shoot in ‘B’ (or ‘Bulb’) mode. Bulb mode lets you keep the shutter open for as long as you hold it down.

When considering what shutter speed to use in an image you should always ask yourself whether anything in your scene is moving and how you’d like to capture that movement. If there is movement in your scene you have the choice of either freezing the movement (so it looks still) or letting the moving object intentionally blur (giving it a sense of movement).

To freeze movement in an image you’ll want to choose a fast shutter speed and to let the movement blur you’ll want to choose a slower shutter speed. The actual speeds you should choose will vary depending upon the speed of the subject in your shot and how much you want it to be blurred.

Use motion to your advantage. For example when you’re taking a photo of a waterfall and want to show how fast the water is flowing, or when you’re taking a shot of a racing car and want to give it a feeling of speed, or when you’re taking a shot of a star scape and want to show how the stars move over a longer period of time etc. In all of these instances choose a longer shutter speed. However in all of these cases you need to use a tripod or you’ll run the risk of ruining the shots by adding camera movement.
Focal Length and Shutter Speed – another thing to consider when choosing shutter speed is the focal length of the lens you’re using. Longer focal lengths will accentuate the amount of camera shake you have and so you’ll need to choose a faster shutter speed (unless you have image stabilization in your lens or camera). The ‘rule’ of thumb to use with focal length in non image stabilized situations is to choose a shutter speed with a denominator that is larger than the focal length of the lens. For example if you have a lens that is 50mm 1/60th is probably ok but if you have a 200mm lens you’ll probably want to shoot at around 1/250.

What is Aperture?
Put most simply – Aperture is ‘the size of the opening in the lens when a picture is taken.’
When you hit the shutter release button of your camera a hole opens up that allows your cameras image sensor to catch a glimpse of the scene you’re wanting to capture. The aperture that you set impacts the size of that hole. The larger the hole the more light that gets in – the smaller the hole the less light.

Aperture is measured in ‘f-stops’ for example f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6,f/8,f/22 etc. Moving from one f-stop to the next doubles or halves the size of the amount of opening in your lens (and the amount of light getting through). Keep in mind that a change in shutter speed from one stop to the next doubles or halves the amount of light that gets in also – this means if you increase one and decrease the other you let the same amount of light in – very handy to keep in mind).
One thing that causes a lot of new photographers confusion is that large apertures (where lots of light gets through) are given f/stop smaller numbers and smaller apertures (where less light gets through) have larger f-stop numbers. So f/2.8 is in fact a much larger aperture than f/22. It seems the wrong way around but you’ll get the hang of it.

Depth of Field and Aperture
Depth of Field (DOF) is that amount of your shot that will be in focus. Large depth of field means that most of your image will be in focus whether it’s close to your camera or far away.
Small (or shallow) depth of field means that only part of the image will be in focus and the rest will be fuzzy. Aperture has a big impact upon depth of field. Large aperture (remember it’s a smaller number) will decrease depth of field while small aperture (larger numbers) will give you larger depth of field.
It can be a little confusing at first but the way I remember it is that small numbers mean small DOF and large numbers mean large DOF.

The best way to get your head around aperture is to take lots of photos and experiment. Set up a shot outside and place some items near the camera as well as far away and take a series of shots with different aperture settings from the smallest setting to the largest. You’ll quickly see the impact that it can have and the usefulness of being able to control aperture.

“Get Uncle Dave to take the photos, he’s a really good photographer and he’s got a really nice camera. He’ll take your wedding photos and you’ll save yourself loads of money”

I have a DVD sitting on my desk with 1000 photographs taken by a real uncle Dave at a wedding on December 12th last year. The couple whose wedding uncle Dave attended came to see me last July to talk about their wedding photography. They were on a tight budget which all couples have to grapple with and they were looking to make savings wherever they could.
They came to see me again last Friday with their set of photographs that uncle Dave had taken and they said that would would ‘pay whatever it cost’ to rescue their wedding photos. Having thought they would make a saving they will, in the end, pay about the same price as they would have for a professional photographer. They’ll be reminded of this everytime they look at their set of retouched rescued uncle Dave’s pics.

And on Saturday a client brought me some black and white prints that he had printed by ‘a well known high street photo shop’ from an image that I had taken and supplied to him on disc. They were badly cropped, printed on colour paper so it had a green colourcast, there were also some watermarks on the paper which indicate sloppy printing. I have offered to reprint them myself free of charge despite the fact he offered to pay me to print them properly. I have to prove to my client that the product I have provided him was as high as he had expected. My high standards have been debased by another supplier in my industry. Uncle Dave is also employed by well known high street shops because professional image makers are expensive to employ.

My point in this blog is that in the last couple of years there seems to have been a significant shift towards cost playing a much larger part in the decision making process even if the risk is poor quality, poor service, and bland, dull, lacklustre work. The recession has a lot to with this and I suspect many industries other than photographers have found cost basis decision making a problem too.

I have never been busier and I know other photographers who are busy too, but there are now many in our industry, particularly in weddings, who have positioned themselves in order to take advantage of the unwary who are looking for photography done cheaply. For uncle Dave this is excellent news. He can join the mass of ‘weekend warriors’ shooting weddings without having to give up the day job. With his new gear, and little experience he can make some easy money taking advantage of couples on a tight budget.

And then yesterday I read an article in ‘The Professional photographer’ written by a fellow photographer, Allister Freeman. Allister is an established wedding photographer with a good reputation. The article talks about his opinons on the current state of wedding photography. He quotes ” ……An age where Joe Public beleives he can do a better job than you, poor perceptions, fuelled by a mass of similar styles and monotonous imagery already saturating the market have a deleterious effect on an already beleagured industry”. A lot of the mystery of photography has been taken away by digital and it’s understandable that Joe Public thinks that he could do a better job with his new gear, but a camera has always been a box with a hole in the front of it and it takes just as much skill and experience to make a good photograph as it always did.

Several years ago it was quite clear who knew what they were doing and who didn’t just by looking at their website, now it is possible to make a slick presentation online for little cost and pitch yourself against those who are good at what they do. At least established photographers can rely on their reputation and on word of mouth, but this is becoming a real problem for photographers who are just starting out and want to offer their customers good quality. And for the client it’s almost impossible to make an informed decision particulary in these days where price is very important.

When the recession has been and gone we’ll look back on ‘the uncle Dave days’ and perhaps simply put it all down to cost driven behaviour. There are uncle Daves in all industries but in this perfect storm where the importance of price meets rapid technology change a new breed of operator has emerged who is satisfying a new demand for cheap at all costs.

For some time now compact cameras have come fitted with zoom lenses, and zoom lenses are often bundled with SLR cameras. Because of the technology involved modern zoom lenses in digital cameras are often even stronger.

So when and why should you use the zoom lens on your camera?
One of the most important rules with portrait photography is “get close”. Unfortunately, for most family snaps, that rule is rarely applied. Uncluttered, closely cropped shots make the best family snaps and natural portrait photographs, and a zoom lens is the ideal way to get close in and get the cropping right.

What does using a zoom do for your photograph?
A zoom lens will get you physically closer to the action, and the content of your photograph will be much stronger if you are be able to isolate parts of the action.
Depth of field can also be used to your advantage when using a zoom lens particularly in portraits. Keep the aperture at around f5.6 and focus on the subject, when the lens is wide open you’ll get the subject in focus and the foreground and background out of focus giving you much stronger emphasis on the subject.
A mid range zoom lens is also ideal for travelling. My wife has banned me from taking a tripod and sets of lenses on holiday so I take a 24mm-105mm lens which can deal with most situations. If you can get away with taking another zoom with you take a 70mm-200mm or something up to 300mm or 400mm. Photographing the locals without attracting attention to yourself is much easier with a longer zoom lens.

Optical Zoom and Digital Zoom?
If you are about to buy a camera, perhaps even step into the world of digital, buy a camera with the strongest optical zoom you can afford. Some of the digital cameras available today have zoom lenses that are 10x or even stronger! The higher the number represented in the optical zoom the closer you can get to the action and the more dynamic your pictures can be. 
As for digital zoom, well…that is another thing altogether. Digital zooms are available in many digital cameras and work on a similar principle to cropping in on a negative. Digital zoom crops in on the digital image and uses only the central pixels in the picture. Then, using inbuilt software, the image is enhanced and built into a file that can be printed. However, the sharpness of your pictures suffers and should only be used if your desperate, if at all. Don’t factor the digital zoom into your purchasing decision.

The Great All-Rounders
Advancements in lens technologies have made some lenses possible today that just couldn’t have been considered twenty years ago. Today, you can buy one lens that lets you take wide angle landscapes and then zoom in to a person in that landscape. What’s more, these lenses are incredibly sharp! Lenses like the Tamron 18-250mm for digital SLR cameras are fantastic and you could travel the world with only this lens and hardly ever miss a shot. In fact, Tamron are packaging their 11-18mm and their 18-250mm lenses together now so that you are covered from superwide to supertelephoto in only two lenses. Most high end lenses also have an image stabilisation capability which can really help with blurred photographs resulting from camera shake.
Compact digital cameras are also including lenses that do much the same thing. The Ricoh R7 has a 7x zoom. The Canon PowerShot is similar. The SX100 IS has a 10x zoom. And there are many others like these. Included with these kinds of cameras are vibration reduction and anti shake modes that prevent your telephoto pictures from being blurred from camera shake.

How Close is ‘Close’?
If you don’t know just how close to get, try this. Compose your picture as you normally would and take it. Then, zoom in. Then, zoom in some more. Keep zooming, or moving closer until you actually begin to see only what you need to see and no more. Take another picture and compare the two. Almost invariably, your second picture will be the more interesting and dynamic of the two. 

We had a busy weekend. We photographed three corporate events in London, a christening, four portrait sessions, and ran our stall on Northcote Road.

The corporate events were good fun. Novotel, the hotel group, hosted a fancy dress party for its staff. It was actually their Christmas party. They are so busy during December that there isn’t time to throw a party for the staff so they all dress up and have their end of year blow out in January.
My assistant, Jimmy and I set up a portrait studio in the ballroom where the party was held to photograph the guests in their fancy dress. While Jimmy photographed the guests I produced 7″x5″ prints for them which they were able to pick up shortly after the photographs were taken. This was a huge hit and is always very popular. So much so that they asked us to stay for another hour.

Producing prints on the night and staging ‘real time’ slideshows is great for the guests as they don’t have to wait to see the results. Also from the host’s point of view, particularly if is is a staff or corporate event it is a great opportuninty to give something fun away. There is also an opportunity to associate your brand or corporate image with the fun event by printing your logo discretely somewhere on the photo, all good stuff for you, your staff, and your clients.

We also photographed Stacy Solomon, the X factor contestant at an event this weekend. I have to admit I didn’t know who she was as I’ve only watched X factor a few times but my eight year old daughter thinks she’s the greatest and I managed to get an autograph for her.

We can generally produce finished photographs from an event between 24 and 48hrs which means that you can use the images to your advantage while the event is still fresh in everyone’s minds. We generally produce two sets of images supplied on DVD; a high res set for prints, and a low res set for web and email use. Go to our events and party photography page for more details.

It’s difficult enough buying presents for people you know well, let alone entire families and people whose tastes you haven’t yet pinned down or don’t share in their taste in art or photography.

At my stall in Northcote Road we see the agonising over ‘what to get you know who’ first hand. It might have been decided that a framed or mounted photograph is the ideal present for ‘you know who’ but will ‘you know who’ like the image you’ve chosen.
The relief is palpable sometimes when a gift voucher may be the answer. OK, its not the ideal solution as you would much prefer to give ‘you know who’ something to unwrap rather than a voucher but ultimately ‘you know who’ will get exactly what they want rather than a near miss.

We can send you your gift voucher through the mail or by email. You can see the selection by going to the following page;
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/vouchers.php

You can use the voucher to purchase or put towards any of the framed and mounted prints we have on offer as well as any of the services we offer.
Below is a list of links to the relevant pages. To buy a voucher just go back to the voucher link above.

Portrait photography;
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/porgallery.php

Event photography;
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/eapgallery.php

Wedding photography;
http://www.weddingphotographerslondon.uk.com/portfolio/

London photographs, Black & White
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

London Photographs, Colour
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

London Panoramic photographs
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

New York photographs Black & White
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

New York photographs Colour
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

Paris Photographs Colour
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

Paris photographs Black & White
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

Prague Photographs Black & White
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

Prague photographs Colour
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

Sydney Photographs Colour
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

Sydney photographs Black & White
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

New Zealand Photographs Colour
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

New Zealand Photographs Black & White
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

This year in the run up to Christmas we will be running our free portrait photography at our stall in the Northcote Road Market. We’ll be there on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays in November and every day of the week in December right up until Christmas eve. The last photography session at the stall before Christmas will be the 21st Dec.

Photographs of you and/or the children are great Christmas present for relatives. We can frame the prints, produce canvases, supply them in mounts or just as prints. We take the photographs inside the stall using a white background and studio lighting. It’s fun, relaxed, and contemporary.

The session is free, you pay for the prints if you want to order. I’ve found over the years with children particularly that studio sessions sometimes just don’t work. The children may be tired, somebody bursts into tears (not just the children!), the youngest has just been punched by the eldest, etc, etc, you know what it’s like!

So, as we are at the stall anyway why not do it for free and if it works well you get some fantastic photographs, and if it doesn’t nobody is out of pocket. If you want to buy a 7″x5″ prints costs £19.50, 12″ x 8″ £25.00, up to a large wall print for £375.00. They can be ordered online, by phone, and at the stall the following weekend.

Last year we got very busy in December so if you can, or are very well organised please come in November or as early in December as you can.

Autumn is by far my favourite time of the year for taking photographs. One of the things that I noticed most in my first year in the UK after my arrival from New Zealand was the change in seasons. We did (still do) have seasons in Christchurch in the South Island of New Zealand, but the South East of England regardless of how awful or good the summer has been always seems to enjoy a period of settled weather around this time of year and you can tell that the autumn colours will be with us soon.

Some of the best outdoor photographs I think I’ve taken of families outdoors have been in the autumn using the colours and leaves as props, and I also think some of my best selling gallery photographs have been taken in various cities in autumn.

So how do you take photographs in autumn? My biggest tip for photography in the autumn is KEEP THE SUN BEHIND YOU.

You can break all the ‘keep the sun behind you’ rules in Spring, Summer and Winter but in autumn the direct light is much softer than it is in summer and worth using to your advantage.

For Portraits and shots of the children playing in the leaves set your DSLR to AV (aperture priority), and set the aperture to the lowest it will go to – maybe 6.4 ,5.6 or 4. The corresponding speed will be quite high and you’ll be able to capture the movement without too much blur.
You could also try this in reverse if the children (and the adults) are throwing leaves at each other. Set your camera to TV (time priority) and set the speed to 60. Take plenty of photographs, I take 50 or 60 images in a burst if there’s lots of action, the law of averages dictates that six or so will be good. take a look at my portraits page for more info.

For Landscape photographs take your time. Most lenses perform best at around f11 so set your camera to AV and the aperture around 11. If you have a tripod use it even if you can take the photograph handheld. I find that using a tripod slows the picture taking process down and I think much more carefully about the composition. If you’re standing with your back to the light the camera’s metering system will be quite accurate although you will need to take a few frames at different exposures just to make sure you get a spot on exposure. Take a look at my photograph galleries for more autumn photographs.

I’ve talked a lot about the settings you should use on SLR cameras. With compact cameras where you can’t make many manual alterations to the camera exposure don’t worry KEEP THE SUN BEHIND YOU.

You’ve got plenty of time, the colours in the last two years according to my records start to look good in mid October, and oak trees don’t start falling until mid December.

Professional studio photographers rarely use direct flash to illuminate a subject, because the results are harsh, unnatural and unattractive. Most SLRS and compact cameras have a built-in flash which blasts light directly at the subject, creating the “rabbit in the headlights” effect.

With the addition of an inexpensive flash unit for bouncing flash, this harshness can be greatly reduced and will give your pictures a professional look. Another solution for cheaper compact cameras is a stick a doubled up piece of tape across the flash which will help diffuse the light, this may be an alternative to buying another piece of electronic equipment and learning to use it.
I take portrait photographs in my stall every weekend (Fridays, Saturdays, and Sunday,) and the flash is bounced off the white ceiling and the white background. It’s so effective that I don’t require the lighting rig I would normally use in the studio.

This technique is something you can easily set up in your own home. They key to bouncing a flash is a reasonably low the ceiling, and to set the flash, if you can, to fire two or three stops above the camera exposure. You can find this setting on the camera (not the flash). The icon on the button will be a plus and minus sign next to a flash symbol. Push the button and ask the flash to overexpose by +2 or +3, the lower the ceiling the less you’ll have to overexpose. Bouncing a flash eats through the batteries due to the higher output required, so make sure you load up with batteries before your sessions.

Try and use your flash with your outdoor portrait photography. This is known as ‘fill in flash’ and is particularly useful when the subject has their back to the sun, or for example under some trees on a sunny day. On a compact camera just turn the flash on, on a SLR you have more control. Push the flash button again on your camera and ask the flash to underexpose slightly (-1, -1.5), by underexposing slightly the lighting will be more subtle and less “rabbit” (in the headlights).

At night most cameras on auto setting with default to flash. You have very little control on a compact camera but on an SLR you can manage how bright the background is relative to the subject. If the light is low set your camera to AV, and set the aperture to the lowest number it will go to, 4.0, 5.0, 5.6 . Then without any over or under exposure set the flash to fire direct at the subject. You’ll have to keep the camera steady as the shutter speed may drop to below 60 (60th of a second) If it’s too dark and there’s a risk of camera shake change the mode to program or P and see how low you can set that aperture.

Please do bring your camera and flash to me at Northcote Road in the weekend and I’ll give you a free 10 minute lesson.

For a photographer, skills in family portraits are essential and are the bread and butter for many  photographers. Looking at the history of photography, one of the first popular uses the camera was not for abstract art, or photographing the family pet, but for photographing people and their families. Because of the expense and difficulty of each photo taken, they became masters at getting things right the first time and being able to fit in as many people as possible into the frame. In order to hone in on the small things that make a difference in this classic and often overlooked form of photography, I have come up with my five DO’s and five DONT’s of Family Portraits. I’ve also included a few examples from sessions I have done. You can see some examples on my portraits page.

Family Portraits DO’S 

1) Do squash your groups together

Even though they are family they won’t be getting close enough. Maybe it’s an English personal space thing, but it’s always been an issue for me and having everyone in tight truly makes a difference in the tone of the picture. When families are physically close, it emits warmth and visually shows what families should be like…close. Even if you are photographing the Adam’s family, when you get everyone rubbing shoulders they look like a model family and the overall composition is more finished than a typical snapshot. As a starter, try having people stand at slight angles with shoulders overlapping. Also, consider the age of your family. If Grandma is present, make sure you have a chair for her. If Grandma and Grandpa are both there, you’ll will need two chairs.

2) Do coordinate clothing

Before you meet with your family you should guide them in a wardrobe choice. Ultimately it is up to them and their families style to choose what they wear but simply reminding them to possibly overlap in a color scheme, avoid extreme colors, prints and logos on their clothing can make a big difference. This will give you an easier time post production, and you will have both options in color and black and white. As I said, it’s their picture and their choice, but a casual recommendation from the photographer is usually appreciated. 

3) Do check the screen for blinking

Shooting and shooting is OK for one or two people, but in a larger group it can be hit and miss and you may miss that one photo where everyone has their eyes open. I used to think “Hey, its digital. I’ll use the rapid fire method and surely I’ll get one right.” After a few sessions of transplanting eyes from one photo to another in Photoshop, I’ve changed my methods. You can get away with a weak smile but if someone looks like they are sleeping in their first family portrait in 10 years, the customer may not be too happy. With experience you learn to quickly scan across everyone’s eyes in an instant. 

4) Try and be funny to get some genuine smiles

A few cheesy jokes work surprisingly well to break the tension. A typical photographer joke might be saying “Ok, I need everyone to get in focus.” Or asking everyone to strike their best glamor pose. Other ways to get a smile is to get them doing something they don’t normally do. Children are much easier, have them try jumping, running, human pyramids or whatever comes to mind. 

5.) Do try and blur the background

Choose the largest aperture setting you can, while still keeping everyone sharp. An aperture of 2.8 might make the trees and shrubbery look silky smooth, but it might make Uncle Fred at the end of the line look fuzzy. This is especially a problem when everyone is standing on different focal planes. The solution is often to shoot a few clicks smaller than the lenses widest aperture, then use the preview screen and zoom button on your camera to make sure everyone is looking good. Then adjust and continue. If you’re really serious about this, I’ve even heard of photographers setting out cups length-wise on a picnic table to estimate the distances you start to loose focus. Seems extreme to me, just don’t forget about Uncle Fred. 

OK so that’s the do’s………….. 

Family Portraits DON’TS

1.) Don’t forget to check ALL your basic camera settings before clicking away

ISO (go as low as possible), Image Size (RAW, fine), Exposure Compensation, Metering etc. It would be sad to get to the end of a great session and realize you didn’t change the low quality settings from the last time you used your camera shooting the sofa you planned on selling on Ebay. Of course in-door and out-door settings will differ as will naturally lit an artificially lit. 

2.) Don’t let your subjects tilt their heads into each other.

This is fine for your everyday snap shot at a barbecue but not a paid photographer. Subjects tend to think they will fit into the picture better if they tilt and lower their heads. Funny thing is, I’ve even caught myself doing this when I was being photographed. Watch for it and avoid it. There is always the lovey-dovey pose where they intentionally lean heads in, but that’s not what I’m talking about. 

3.) Don’t sound insecure

Don’t say things like “This isn’t working.” Rephrase it into a positive, “Great, lets try a few more positions.” The more you tell them the pictures are looking great the better looking the pictures will get. Think high fashion cliche’s like, “Love it,” “Your beautiful,” “What a great one.” If you act like you have never seen such great photos the energy will give you just what you’re looking for and they will show confidence in their smiles.