Review Digital Camera World 07-23-2013

Digital Camera World

Family Portrait Ideas: how to photograph your loved ones at any age or occasion Jul 22nd 2013, 23:01, by jmeyer For most amateur photographers, taking memorable portraits of their family is one of the greatest benefits of their hobby. It's also really handy – after all, you're around your family more often than most other subjects and know their characters inside out. They'll also feel more relaxed and easy in your presence than another photographer, so you've got everything working in your favour if you follow our advice. In this tutorial we share some of our best family portrait ideas for babies, children and a range of different events when you might want to pull out your camera. Family Portrait Ideas for Babies The arrival of a new baby always brings out the cameras, and the small children make great subjects all the way through the early years of childhood (right up until the age when they realise they can bargain for chocolate or video games). But while babies and toddlers might be supremely photogenic, they usually have their own agenda. They're not much interested in cameras, sitting still or smiling on demand a dozen times in a row. You can usually persuade adult subjects to perform when required, but children represent a special challenge for the family portrait photographer. Babies are often not in the mood to be put down, so you may get better results if you photograph both parent and baby together. Indeed, the relationship between the two can produce a more rewarding picture than a baby on its own. Babies get bored, too, and you may have to find something more interesting to do than simply pointing a camera. Peek-a-boo games can prompt a spontaneous smile, while brightly-coloured toys dangled just above the camera lens are good for generating expressions of concentration or wide-eyed wonder. Toddlers may be easier to deal with in some ways but harder in others. By this age they will have developed their own personality and may not be at all interested in what you're trying to do. You may have to abandon any attempt at formal, static portraits and find an absorbing activity instead and just try to fit in with it. Why not ask them to show you their favourite toy, or find out what they like doing and ask if you can photograph them doing it? You may have to abandon any attempts at posed shots and just grab pictures as and when you can. This is the advantage of digital cameras, of course – you can afford to take dozens of shots and simply discard those which don't work out. Toddlers have a habit of darting around unpredictably, which means you'll need to use faster shutter speeds – and this in turn may mean higher ISOs when shooting indoors. Focusing will be quite a headache, and it's usually pretty pointless trying to get your subjects sharp while you're chasing them around the house. Instead, try to predict moments of stillness – maybe find an activity they have to stand still for. PAGE 1: Family Portrait Ideas for Babies PAGE 2: Family Portrait Ideas for Children PAGE 3: Family Portrait Ideas for Holidays and Events PAGE 4: Family Portrait Ideas for Group Photos READ MORE Free family portrait photography cheat sheet Classic Portrait Ideas: how to take pictures of people from all walks of life Portrait composition: how to compose a portrait that is classic and timeless Maternity photography ideas: 17 tips for pregnancy photos she’ll cherish forever 10 portrait photography mistakes every photographer makes (and how to avoid them) Panograph photography: how to make on-trend, 'low-tech' panoramas Jul 22nd 2013, 10:53, by jmeyer A panograph is like a low-tech panorama, but as we show in our latest Photoshop Elements tutorial, its characteristic fragmented, home-made look can produce some fascinating pictures. What is a Panograph? Regular panoramas are good for photographing scenes which are too wide to capture with a single shot. With today's photo editing software it's possible to assemble the individual frames so that the joins are invisible. But in a 'panograph', there's no attempt to hide the joins. Indeed, the fact that the picture is made up of individual photos is celebrated. It sounds like a technically inferior way to take panoramas, but panographs turn the scene into a kind of impressionistic mosaic, with fragments of life passing before the lens in a series of changing moments. Buildings don't quite join up, pedestrians are chopped in half or appear in more than one frame, and there's so much more to occupy your eyes as you unravel the fractured details in the scene. Panographs are easy to shoot. JPEGs are fine, auto exposure is ideal, and auto White Balance is too. With a regular panorama, you need to shoot every shot on manual to be sure there are no variations in tone or colour between frames, but here all these variations are welcome. Some panographers even modify individual frames to exaggerate the differences. There are two things you need to do to get your panograph right. You shoot a scene as a series of overlapping images and it's crucial that you don't leave any gaps. If you do, your software will have a hard time matching them up later, and while you can do this manually, it's laborious. You also need to stop your software from trying to produce a 'perfect' panorama. We're using the Photomerge tool in Photoshop Elements, and there are some specific settings you need to use to make this panograph effect work. Both of these things are simple to get right, though. Panography is such an interesting technique – it's a low-tech approach that delivers fascinating images. PAGE 1: What is a panograph? PAGE 2: How to shoot your panograph? PAGE 3: How to assemble your panograph? READ MORE 10 reasons your photos aren’t sharp (and how to fix them) 34 Photoshop effects every photographer must try once Crop photos the right way: classic mistakes and how to avoid them Adobe Lightroom: what every photographer needs to know about the ‘alternative Photoshop’ Clone Stamp Tool: how to remove unwanted objects to rescue your photos

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