Easy Tips To Take Your Own Family Photos

Do you love fam­i­ly pho­tos but find that you are often behind the cam­era and not in the actu­al pic­ture? Are you ready to take your own fam­i­ly photos?

I know exact­ly how you feel. I try to get good fam­i­ly pho­tos every year. Some years I will splurge on a pho­tog­ra­ph­er to get a good fam­i­ly shot, but oth­er years I make sure to carve out time from the pho­tog­ra­phy sched­ule to take my own fam­i­ly session.

Now, you may be intim­i­dat­ed by the thought of doing your own fam­i­ly ses­sion, and it is nice to have some­one do your fam­i­ly shots but fol­low these easy tips, and you can take your own fam­i­ly pho­tos, and get beau­ti­ful results.

Have The Correct Equipment

Hav­ing the cor­rect equip­ment is key. If you want to take your own fam­i­ly pho­tos, you will want to invest in the prop­er equipment. 

Sure, you’ve got the cam­era and the lens­es, but you will want to have a good, stur­dy tri­pod and a remote shut­ter. Most cam­eras have an inter­nal timer but trust me, a remote shut­ter will be a life­saver. You will want and need more than 10 sec­onds to get into posi­tion to look amaz­ing in the shot.

If you have a new­er mod­el cam­era, it may come equipped with built-in Wifi. This is ide­al and lets you con­trol your shut­ter via your phone. Just remem­ber, it does­n’t mat­ter if you use your phone or a remote shut­ter, keep it well hid­den as you don’t want it show­ing up in the final photo.

Plan Ahead

Plan­ning ahead is cru­cial when you take your own fam­i­ly pho­tos. Plan­ning can save you time in the long run.

Plan the loca­tion and out­fits ahead of time. Ensure you’ve set your com­po­si­tion up cor­rect­ly and your pos­es down ahead of time. Make sure you leave an easy “spot” for your­self to slide into.

Make sure that the set­tings on your cam­era are cor­rect. Doing a test shot to ensure that your white bal­ance, aper­ture, shut­ter speed and ISO are prop­er­ly set will save you frus­tra­tion later.

Lighting Is Everything

You may know my motto…shoot for the light and not for the loca­tion. Light­ing is every­thing in a pho­to and you should always take light­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion when shoot­ing. It is no dif­fer­ent when you take your own fam­i­ly photos. 

Take a sec­ond to make sure no one is stand­ing in dap­pled light, that the sun is shin­ing direct­ly into their eyes, or that no one is squint­ing. Bring every­one into that per­fect light that catch­es the catch­lights in their eyes. 

If you are feel­ing real­ly brave, plan your shoot for the gold­en hour to cap­ture that per­fect evening light. 

Capture Individuals

Once you get the shots with you tak­en cap­ture the indi­vid­u­als or small­er groups. This is a great time to cap­ture indi­vid­ual shots of the kids, your part­ner and the sib­lings. Get the fam­i­ly shots out of the way and let the kids play and cap­ture the action.

Set up a shot of you and the kids, and let your part­ner try to cap­ture it. Also, remem­ber that not every­one needs to look at the cam­era every time. Can­dids are great and show the con­nec­tion between those in the photo.

Have Fun

Remem­ber to have fun! Not every shot has to be per­fect. When you take your own fam­i­ly pho­tos, it is more about cre­at­ing mem­o­ries than cre­at­ing an ide­al fam­i­ly portrait.

Set expec­ta­tions at the begin­ning, relax, enjoy and cre­ate those won­der­ful memories.

I guar­an­tee you will remem­ber this for years to come, and it may be one of your favorite pho­to ses­sions yet! 

If you are ready to under­stand your cam­era and start tak­ing amaz­ing pho­tos of your fam­i­ly and friends today come join The Begin­ners Pho­tog­ra­phy Essen­tials Class!