An Easy Way to Get Kid Photos
June 21, 2023
By degree I’m a teacher and graphic designer so combining those two skill sets, I want to show you something. I love photography. My graphic design electives were in photography. Black and white photography is always intriguing for me because it’s so dramatic, but that’s not the focus for what I’d like to show you.
My favorite people to photograph are my kids, of course. They are fun and familiar so they are pretty easy to get candid photos of. Sometimes we don’t want candid, we want a nice pose and an expression. The issue is they move… all the time. My kids always talk and joke with each another as if I am not there with a camera trying to get decent photos. With that said, I had to come up with a successful solution to get photos without me getting frustrated and ruining the mood and moment I wanted to photograph. Emotions are so important in photos. We emote and our photographs will reflect them! Getting frustrated with your kids, well that’s common but no fun for pictures, so what’s a mom to do? We will find a way as usual! Here’s mine…
I’ve been told I have a great eye for photos and I’ve been asked,
“How do you get pictures like that?”
Well, I have method I use because I got tired of missing great photo moments. First of all, be advised that this method is specifically for web and social media posts only. I would not use this for printed photos because it uses screenshots. Screenshots may not produce quality photos for print and especially for larger projects. Well, I’ve printed smaller 4×6 photos from screenshots at home on my Canon inkjet printer for home photo albums. For any quality print you really need photos to be at least 300 dpi, if not might have fuzzy photos that sharpening in Photoshop can not fix. For web and social media posts, 72 dpi is preferred because you need photos to load faster. Our screen resolutions play into how lower quality photos are displayed on our screens too. So this method will serve you well for social media and web posts but don’t bank on it being a great method of large print photos. No one likes to see a fuzzy bad quality photo in print. – Social Media and web only…
Let’s go! My daughters had a premiere event for their short film and they wanted to look nice. Before we went I wanted some nice photos of them. I always start with video. I have an iPhone 14 Pro Max so the functions I use are from iPhone. If I can not get a few good photos, switch to video. Make sure you have a clean lens and good lighting. Your light source should always be in front of the people you are photographing or videoing. Let the kids know you are recording video so they don’t stand there like statues smiling waiting for you to take photos. They came move naturally, pause for a few seconds, and change pose. My daughters pose, pause and adjust, pose pause and adjust. They know it’s video so they don’t feel nervous about staying still for long. They also feel free to just be them without the pressure of messing up. When you record video they can interact with each other and that dynamic can be seen in this method too. I love the interactions because you get the giggles, interesting actions shots.
Afterwards you can create a fun mashup video of the photography session and upload that to social media as well. The video to the left shows our mashup video and the edited screenshots. I used the CapCut app to put photos and videos together w/ music. Below it is an explanation of why.
So, after you feel like you got enough video, review the video and pause on the moments you would like to take a screenshot of. While I’m looking at the video I look for moments where I can pause it and screenshot. Skip the blurred moments because you can’t edit them enough to clear them up. I take a screenshot of all the moments I like or need. After I get all the screenshots, I go in to the phone’s photo editor, crop and color correct and save the photos. I usually use the iPhone photo editing tools to adjust color and add affects. Photoshop does have an app for mobile phones as well as many other photo editing apps. Use your favorite.
To review, instead of trying to capture individual photos, use video to capture moments.
1. Open your video app on your phone.
2. Start taking video of your kids. Make sure you let the know it’s video.
3. Have your kids pose and pause for 3 seconds, and repeat this until you have enough video poses.
4. Review the video for the paused moments.
5. Screenshot the paused moments.
6. Crop and color correct your photos.
7. Upload your favorite photos to social media.
Optional – create your video/photo session video in Capcut.
One last thing, this light outline effect was an effect the iPhone does when you want to cut out a person or object in a photo. If you touch and hold a person the iPhone will outline the person with this light effect. I liked it so I did a screen record of the effect, cropped and trimmed the video and used it at the end of their mashup video. Here’s that one single video of the effect. Be sure to crop out the notch of the copy/share option or use photo editing to erase it.
That’s all folks!