Improving Your Pictures With This One Tiny Adjustment

The quickest and easiest tip I can give to fellow moms who want to improve the pictures they take on their point-and-shoot cameras is this: GET ON YOUR CHILD'S LEVEL.

How many of us have countless pictures, like this one below, where you're looking down on the top of your child's head because you were standing at the time or sitting on the couch and you wanted to snap a quick photo of your kid doing something adorable?

Blah mommy-picture moment brought to you by ME

It's all well and good to snap pictures and try to capture that fleetingly adorable moment, but also make the effort to get yourself down to eye level with them ASAP!  This was the single "Aha!" moment that transformed my photography from typical (as picture above) to beautiful (as pictured below), and all it requires is a little effort on my part.

A MUCH better photograph and one that I have proudly hanging on my wall at home

Sure, it means I get a little dusty and it can be really rough on the knees at times, but it is the easiest photography secret to learn and carry into your own pictures.

It's tough to look back on my old photographs and admit that I knew virtually nothing about picture-taking back then.  Most of my decent pictures were happy accidents.  I knew a great picture when I captured it, but I couldn't have told you what I did right to replicate it in the next situation.  I had a love for cameras, and according to my mom, "A natural knack for the art," but I needed to learn so much more!

If you're like I used to be back then, I thought editing would be my magic cure-all for what I knew was missing from my photographs.  SURPRISE!  Editing can do nothing to correct a picture that wasn't taken correctly to begin with.  Getting down on your child's level, ensuring you pay attention to what's in the background (http://sweatyhorsedesigns.blogspot.com/2015/06/whats-up-with-other-peoples-photos.html), and keeping your photography style in the back of your mind at all times (http://sweatyhorsedesigns.blogspot.com/2015/06/whats-your-style-and-how-to-find-it.html) helps you point the camera in the right direction, at the right level, to produce a photo that you can impress yourself with!

*TIP*: Get down at the same level as your child for the best picture-taking moments.

Please visit my website
www.AshleyGesslerSHD.com

What's Your Style? And, How To Find It.

If you're like me, you love to look through beautiful photographs and wish you could take pictures like that.  I have a few photographers I follow regularly, and I find myself "oohing" and "awwing" over the unique perspectives and the overall feel of the images.

In one of the photography classes I took online, I was given the assignment of pulling pictures from the internet that "spoke" to me and then analyze them to find the common thread.

Here are the pictures I pulled from a quick Google search of "horses" and then selecting "Images":

 Do you see the common thread?  I discovered that my personal photography tastes are drawn toward the vantage point of a child.  (I also really like black and white images, but that's a topic for a later post.)

Pulling the pictures and placing them all in a single folder together gave me the opportunity to see what I'm drawn to and what appeals to me.  Yes, these are all horse photos, but I try to carry that unique perspective that I love so much with me into the rest of my photography life.

Does a child's vantage point work for every shot?  Absolutely not.  However, I always keep it in the back of my mind.

What else do you notice about the pictures?  I noticed that very few of the pictures were "full shots."  Most, in fact, are simply a sliver of the full picture.  Ever single image focuses on a single detail, something that makes it unique, and then amplifies it.  The ribbon, the rider's outside leg, the bend of the horse's neck, the whiskers on the nose... it's what I would discover to be "detail shots."

I'm sure you can pick out a few common features all these pictures have, but the ones I have mentioned are the biggest ones that stood out to me and guided the direction I would go as a photographer.

So, now I ask you to do the same exercise.  Pick a theme that you love.  Mine was horses, but yours may be children, or landscapes, or dogs, or whatever else tickles your fancy.  Set aside an area where you can save all your pictures in one place.  Do a Google search and start saving some images that really speak to your creative side.  What do you love to look at?

Take a few minutes to go back and study the images that you have saved.  What's your common thread?  Is there a color scheme that is repeated?  Do you prefer a certain vantage point?  Is it an unusual balance in the way the photo is cropped that speaks to you?

Visit www.picmonkey.com and drop the pictures you've selected into a collage as I have done with the images above.  It doesn't have to be anything fancy, but give yourself a representation of where you would like to see your photography take you even if your sole purpose is to take better pictures of your kids.  There is absolutely no shame in that!

What you'll wind up with is a collection of images that inspire you.

*TIP*: Put together a collection of pictures that inspire you.  Search for a common theme that runs through the majority of the images.  What photography styles have you discovered that speak to you?

Please visit my website
www.AshleyGesslerSHD.com

What's up with other peoples' photos?

So, you're strolling through your Facebook feed and you happen upon "SuzieQ's" photos of her kids in the swimming pool at their house.  As you look through picture after picture of seemingly perfect perfection you begin to feel that little green monster of envy creep back into your mind.  "Why do SuzieQ's pictures always seem to look better than yours?  And, how does she do it?"

True, some people simply have a knack for telling a beautiful story with a single photograph, but I'm going to let you in on a little secret; virtually none of those photos came straight off a camera and onto the web without serious thought and planning being put into the image BEFORE it was taken and without some form of re-touching AFTER it was taken.  The idea that great pictures just happen is a bit misguided.  There are moments where the photographer just happened to be in the right spot at the right time, but those incidences are few and far between.  Most photographers put serious thought into an image long before they ever put the view finder to their eye (and some super-skilled photographers are even gifted enough to simply point the camera in the right direction from hip-height and wind up with an excellent shot).

The neat thing about photography, though, is that literally anyone can do it, and anyone can learn a few tips to improve the skills they have already acquired.

For starters you need nothing more than a digital camera with a decent resolution.  Don't know what that means?  If you can pull up some stats on the camera you will be working with, you want to look for how many megapixels your camera has.  Megapixels are the individual dots that your photo is made up of and while a higher number of megapixels doesn't necessarily represent a higher quality image, it's a good place to start.  (For more serious and in-depth reading on the subject read http://photography.tutsplus.com/articles/an-in-depth-look-at-megapixels-and-resolution--photo-8914.)  Most cameras with 8 megapixels or higher will put out a decent enough image for computer screens and small prints up to 5x7.

Next, you want to determine what type of camera you're working with if you don't already know.  Are you using a point-and-shoot or a phone camera that does all the adjustments for you?  Are you using a professional-type DSLR like the Canon Rebel?  Or, are you using a hybrid of the two that offers a few customizable settings but functions primarily with automatic settings such a Nikon Coolpix?

No matter what you're working with, set it to the green AUTO setting and let's go from there.

Before snapping a picture, take a moment to look through the viewfinder (or sneak a peek on the back display).  Every picture has a story to tell and it's important that you figure out what that story will be before you get started.  Take for example these two pictures of my daughter.  These were taken at the Montgomery Zoo in June of 2015 while we were preparing to feed the giraffes.  The picture on the left is a pretty typical candid shot where the photographer is looking down on the child, there are feet in the frame, it's not cropped well, etc.  It's blah and it really doesn't say much about what was going on.

After my lackadaisical moment of forgetting to be a photographer instead of a mom, I snapped back into picture mode and made the image tell more of a story.  I instructed my daughter to hold the cup of alfalfa up to the camera, I zoomed in just slightly so my husband's feet could no longer be seen, and *snap*!  Instantly, the photo is much better and says, "We're going to feed some critters!"  It's not a professional image by any means, and I could have done more to ensure I had a truly clean background, but munchkin was antsy and it's certainly an improvement over what I had earlier.

*TIP*: Pay attention to your background.  What is behind your subject that could potentially interfere with the image?

*TIP*: What story are you hoping your picture(s) will tell?  Keep that in mind the entire time you're shooting.

Please visit my website
www.AshleyGesslerSHD.com