Giving Your Child A Timeless Gift:

A Basic Guide to Photography for Parents and Parents To Be

As a parent or a parent to be there will be any number gifts you will be able to give your child to make sure that your child grows up to become the young person you want them to be. Yes, I mean teaching them patience and kindness as well as providing them with an occasional toy.

But, there is an even more important gift you can give that will ensure that the best parts of their young life will be remembered forever.

Of course I am talking about photos. Photographs help us to recall events from our youth, especially when we grow older. They remind us of the good, the bad and the fun times we had, as well as where we come from.

In what follows l will introduce you to a few essential photography tips and techniques that will help you capture all those moments that will, one day, help your child realize just how much you loved him or her.

What To Expect

If you are just going to grab your camera and snap some pictures, hold on a moment, parents. You need to think about photography in general: for example, what makes a good picture? Is it the technical aspect? Is it the intuition needed to recognize a great shot when it presents itself? Or something else?

In my opinion, photography is about a both technical skills and picture composition. You will need to learn to use your camera and all of the features it has while, at the same time, learning which elements presented in the view finder will and will not work.

I will give you a bit of advice on both how best to prepare yourself for this photographic journey to record the life of your child. If you are overwhelmed by all of this, may I suggest to you that you consider taking online digital photography classes?

The Technical Skills You Need

In the basic form photography is all about light. And if you learn to how to use the light entering the lens in your camera, then you will be able to create photographic magic! So let us look at a few of the basic concepts.

More About Light…

Understand that some types of light are good, in terms of photography, while others are not, which means that we have to understand what is meant by the ‘dynamic range’ of a camera.

Dynamic range refers to the differences in light or tone that can be used before some parts of the image we are photographing loses detail. Human eyes have a dynamic range of about 2000:1, while the average digital slr camera has a dynamic range of only about 8:1. This means that, when the ‘wrong’ type of light is available to illuminate our subject, it may cast deep shadows that will appear black on film, or perhaps wash out the image because the light is too bright.

In practical terms when you are photographing outdoors you will do well to take your pictures early in the morning or late in the afternoon. Cloudy days are also excellent when photographing outdoors, and will bring out the beautiful skin tone of your child.

Use The Exposure Triangle

Your camera will provide you with many settings that allow you to manipulate the light which enters the camera through the lens. Most prominent among these are the elements of the ‘Exposure Triangle’ and include ISO, aperture and shutter speed. Here is a brief look at each of these factors:

ISO

ISO is a term that is used rather loosely and refers to the film speed standard for color film as maintained by the International Standards Organization. You can find more information by searching for ISO 5000:1987 on the internet.

Digital cameras today do not use film any more but the standards still apply and are more commonly referred to as the sensitivity to light of the camera.

If you are intent on taking a picture of your child in a low light environment, then you will want to make that you are using a large ISO number on the order of 800. Where the light is bright, the reverse is true: use a lower ISO number like 100. Familiarize yourself with this feature of your camera by through experimentation.

Aperture

The aperture of your camera refers to the size of the lens opening which controls the amount of light that gets admitted into the camera and onto the image. It works very much like the pupil of the human eye. One of the oddities of photography is that the smaller the f-stop number the larger the opening; therefore an f-stop of f/1.4 will allow twice the amount of life to enter the camera as an f-stop of f/2

Shutter Speed

The last element of the Exposure Triangle refers to shutter speed, which is measured in fractions of a second and seconds. This function determines how fast the shutter opens and closes.

In order to take photographs holding the camera you will need shutter speeds of between 1/60 of a second and 1/000 of a second. Shutter speeds less than 1/60 of a second and slower will typically require the use of a tripod to avoid camera movement.

Composition

In the end, good photographic composition is a skill mastered only by practice, practice and then some more, practice. Remember, all really good photographs should tell a story, that is what sets them apart from mere pictures.

About The Author

Betty A. Muscott is an accomplished child photographer who provides tips on how to photograph children and create beautiful images. She provides a review of a great Canon starter digital camera along with some great ideas on how to display those photographs in leather bound photo albums.