With the pandemic looming large in the background, we find ourselves more and more at home these days. Why not make the best use of our loved ones around us and capture the moment. Especially, young children make for great muses. Perhaps they’ve learned a new skill, they’re engrossed in their favourite activity or they’re having a giggle while making funny faces.
- Use your Phone Camera
DSLR cameras, though a great option can be cumbersome at times. Especially, when you shoot children, moments go by very quickly. Mobile phones are always handy and is a great way to capture the fleeting moments, “The Decisive Moments” the term coined by the legend Henri Cartier-Bresson.
I normally shoots with my iPhone and uses photo-editing apps such as Adobe Lightroom Photo Editor and Focos.
- Make the most of morning light
The morning is a great time to take photos at home, and if you’re lucky enough to have a sunny day, it will bring lots of natural light into rooms. It’s a great light to shoot in and you’ll be rewarded for getting up early with interesting shadows!
- Learn to Edit in Lightroom or any other editing software of your choice
You can make basic corrections, in Light tab in Lightroom, by lowering the highlights a little and raising the shadows a bit. You can also adjust the tone curve to make the shadows greyish, so that they don’t come out completely black.
With Lightroom, it’s possible to crop and rotate images, adjust the colour and exposure, as well as intuitively edit and process photos.
From the Color tab, you can lower the saturation slightly and make it look more natural in order to prevent the reds and oranges from becoming too strong.
Finally, add some grain with the Effects tab. The image will take on a slightly rough texture, as though it had been shot on film.
- Take a new perspective on everyday activities
In a house with kids, doing homework or drawing pictures are typical activities that may not seem like anything special, but it’s a great way to capture these moments and highlight your child’s interest and activity. Look for unique angles to shoot, to bring some spark in an other wise mundane activities.
- Master those birthday pics
Most of us, have been stuck at home now. With birthdays which came and went with little opportunity of a celebration outdoors. Make the best of these “lockdown birthdays”, by capturing these treasured moments– but these are also difficult scene to take good pictures.
Try and turn off the lights in the room and only use the light from the candles. The colours don’t show up well if there are multiple light sources mixing. Also, try not to use a flash.
Focused on the cake and faces respectively, and shoot in portrait mode. The iPhone automatically switches to night mode depending on the brightness of the scene and the camera automatically adjusts the exposure time from one to three seconds, but since children move a lot, it’s best to set it to about one second to avoid blurring.
Hold the iPhone in both hands or setting your elbows on a table and using them like a tripod, also helps.
- Find joy in the small things
When taking pictures of your child, reminder to find joy in simple, everyday moments at home together – the ones that produce memories you can truly treasure and that is what counts.
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