5 Girls & a Guy - Photo tip too!

Here are a couple simple tips to help you take better pictures of your family.
My favorite: Never use the Date Stamp! Many people used the date stamp feature to put the date on onto your photograph so they can remember when it was taken. With digital photography as long as your camera date is set the information is written into the digital file. You can right click on any digital photo and select 'Properties'. This will show you the creation date and when the file was last modified. Most photo editing & organizing programs will also display the created date with the file. You can also save a file with the date in the name. I only save ours with the month and year to keep the file name short.

Always shoot with the highest quality your digital camera will allow. Back in the film days the better the film the better quality pictures. The same thing applies with digital. Most cameras have several different quality settings. Some cameras categories are listed as simply as Extra Fine, Fine, Normal. Memory cards are becoming cheaper and cheaper for loads of memory. The old reason (expensive memory) people did not use the finest quality doesn't apply anymore.

One other item to check on your camera. Is your zoom optical or digital? If it is an optical zoom great! Feel free to use your zoom when needed. If your zoom is digital pretend you do not have a zoom. All it is doing is cropping your picture in camera. You are better off doing it yourself later when digital editing or better yet, just move closer to your subject. There are a few cameras with both digital and optical zoom features. It's hard to know when the optical zoom is maximized and the digital zoom starts. Not sure what to tell you when this is your cameras feature.

Happy picture taking! Remember your photographs become family history the moment they are printed and/or preserved.

Love love love to see people jump, so don't know why! Look at what fun they are having. To me jumping is pretty much like potty humor. Even if you don't like it you end up laughing and having fun!


All the girls look so different from each other, and they are all beautiful.


Getting everyone's faces close together is one of my favorite things. There is just such a cool closeness that makes people really feel the connection to each other bringing out the connection for the photo. You may recognize Courtney as one of my fabulous senior reps.


It was fun really doing different poses with each of the girls.


She is laying on a super tiny tree branch. Talk about balancing talent!


I really liked this spot.


More joy. More fun.


I follow the blog of a couple (their married) really cool photographers out of somewhere up North in what most people call the Midwest.. lol Anyway, they had a cool family shot the other day that inspired this one. Don't they all just look so comfortable and happy?


I love this storyboard! It would look great in their master bedroom.