Last week our oldest was home from college for Thanksgiving so we set aside an hour to take the annual family picture.  We were so grateful to have perfect weather that day (hello gorgeous fall colors!) and a willing and talented photographer to assist.   Last year I just set up the tripod for our family Christmas photo, but this year we liked the idea of being outdoors together.

We enlisted the help of my talented friend Heidi who takes amazing pictures as a hobby (but really she should go professional!) and she’s always teaching me something new about photography, sharing her tips, and turning me on to fab photography sites. 

I asked if she could meet us at our house and snap a few photos.  We looked around the neighborhood for a great backdrop and I saw this tree just up the hill from our house so that’s where we shot these.  The whole shoot took 20 minutes and we were done – I love how they turned out! 

A few tips for taking great outdoor family photos:

1)  Lighting.  Most professionals will tell you to snap the images during the “golden hour” or “sweet light” which is one hour after sunrise and one hour before sunset when the sun’s rays are not overhead but traveling sideways instead since the sun is low in the sky. 

2)  A Good Photographer.  If you don’t know a great photographer, then by all means hire one!  An hour spent on a session plus a CD of the captures to go with it is a great investment.  Pictures really are the best keepsakes!   Kids grow up fast so I say spend the bucks, you’ll never regret a great photography session.

3).  A Great Backdrop.  Think brick walls, pretty nature scenes like the beach or the woods, an old barn, anyplace that has some color and character. 

4)   Limit the Palette.  There’s no need to wear matching outfits, but it’s best to at least keep the palette limited. This year we went with gray and navy and that worked and everyone dressed in what they liked.  The exception is if you’re shooting in black and white and in those circumstances it doesn’t really matter if everyone is wearing something in a different color. 

5)  Act Naturally.  Hyper posed images can seem phony so it’s nice when you just snuggle up naturally or engage in antics that capture the family’s personality.  Just ask the photographer to keep snapping and you’ll end up with some great ones! 

Have you taken any great family pictures outdoors?  If so, share your tips! 

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I’m constantly experimenting with photo styling as I continue on this blog journey, and I absorb inspiration from all sorts of places, from magazines, food stylists, prop stylists, Pinterest too.  One of the things I’m always looking to improve is my photography.  I’ve come a long way since the beginning of this blog in 2009 but I think I still have a way to go, I aim high!

When I look at the portfolios of professional stylists, I’m always so impressed and inspired, and when I’ve had the opportunity to work or converse with them, I try to learn a thing or two from their many talents.  Here are five tips I’ve learned in the past year when it comes to styling and photographing a project, scene, recipe, or room.

Shoot from Above.   Taking a picture of a scene from a bird’s eye view is one additional angle to consider when taking pictures of your latest tablescape, project, or recipe.  This can be complicated for larger scenes because you need a lens that can capture all of the subject matter and the advantage of height above it, and it doesn’t work with everything, but it’s a great trick to keep in the back of your mind when you’re taking pictures from the side, think about snapping a picture from a high above angle too.

Agent Bauer

Halloween tablescape for Dabble Magazine

The Marion House Book

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Oh did you think I was talking about beauty products?  Sorry to disappoint!

No no no, I’m talking about removing blemishes or small imperfections in pictures!  I know some people consider image boosting or tweaking a hush-hush subject but I don’t.  Every now and then you shoot a great image, upload it to your computer and think, oh darn, if only I could get rid of that spot/pimple/speck of dust.  Well there are some free tools out there that let you do just that – remove those spots or blemishes or specks of dust from your images.  They’re free, easy to use, and pretty handy!

Let’s practice on this basket filled with pumpkins, ‘tis the season, you know.  There is a “Blemish Fix” tool in PicMonkey – a new and improved version of once popular Picnik that closed, and the tool will remove smaller imperfections like these brown spots on these little white pumpkins.

This shot is straight out of the camera, notice the tiny brown spots on the pumpkins in the center and in the upper right?

Upload your image to PicMonkey and use the Blemish Fix tool to remove the spots:

A few clicks later, those tiny spots are gone, easy peasy.

Another more advanced tool, and also free, is the spot healing brush in Pixlr, which mimics the same tool in Photoshop.   I’ve praised the Pixlr tools before (here and here).  It’s a simplified version of Photoshop Elements and it’s an online program that’s completely free – all you need is an internet connection.

You can use the Clone Tool just like in Photoshop to grab nearby pixels and cover blemishes, but the Spot Heal Tool is easier.   Here’s an image I posted earlier this week from the Tomato Festival, notice the hole on the front tomato.

I left it in the image because it looks natural to me, but if I had wanted to remove it here’s how to do it in Pixlr.   Open your image in Pixlr Editor (Advanced) and select the Spot Heal tool highlighted below – it looks like a Band Aid.

Select the size and hover over the spot and start drawing on top where you want to heal the image.

Use your mouse to click or draw on the spot and it will magically “heal” the image with the surrounding pixels.  Here’s the image with the “repaired” tomato.

I do prefer when photographs are real and actually depict the subject, but sometimes you may want to tweak your image to remove a tiny imperfection (like a pimple!) or an unwanted speck and these two tools help you do it, plus they’re easy and free!

What are your favorite photo boosting or editing tools?

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I’ve been focused (ha!) on my photography lately, trying to improve even more and one of the things I’ve been studying is focal length.  I’m learning that not only do aperture, shutter speed, and ISO settings matter, but millimeters do too.  All digital camera lenses have a mm setting assigned to them, some are fixed (50mm or 35mm) others are zoom.  The assigned millimeters are the mathematical definition for the distance between the lens and image sensor (focal length), but in everyday language, just know that the number determines from how close or far away you can capture a subject with a particular lens.

10-24mm is a wide angle which allows you to pull back and capture full room shots, architecture, or larger landscapes. I have a Tamron wide angle and I love it.  Most kit lenses that come with a DSLR camera are in the 18-55mm range.  Telephotos go all the way up to 600mm or higher and allow you to zoom in from far away – they’re great for capturing sports or wildlife, and I’ve always wanted to play with one!

Last spring, my little boy played baseball and one of the moms was snapping pictures with a giant telephoto lens and she was able to capture some fun closeups of the team in action from far away, so I struck up a conversation with her – I do that with photographers, I’m fascinated by the fancy equipment and lenses!  Turns out, she’s not a professional photographer at all, it’s her hobby and she had rented the lens to take pictures of her son.   Okay wow, renting lenses?  Sounds like a great idea!

A few months went by and I eventually decided to try it out for myself.  I used Borrow Lenses* to rent this 70-300mm zoom Nikkor lens and picked it up at a local shop (there are several pickup locations in California) to play around for the first time with a telephoto lens.

We headed out to Bodega on Saturday for our favorite clam chowder stop and for me to test out this lens.  The clarity is slightly compromised since these are .jpgs but here’s an image taken from the hill above with the 18-55mm kit lens that came with my Nikon D90.

I switched the lens to the 70-300mm telephoto and zoomed in – the shot of the dock and seagulls got a little more dynamic!

Sometimes the kit lens captured exactly what I wanted – these boats along the water are a gorgeous scene, I actually like this image better than the zoom.

Switching again, I was able to use the borrowed telephoto to zoom in on the waterfront homes across the bay.

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