DIY Photography Season by Season - Part 2: How to take great photos of your summer holiday with the kids

Summer’s here! The sun is shining – most of the time – school holidays are on their way and I’m sure many of you will be going away on holidays with your little ones, creating memories you want to capture forever.

Whether you’re staying close to home, camping in the Lake District or looking forward to a sunny couple of weeks lying by the pool abroad, summer holidays are the stuff great family memories are made of.

I’m sure you’ll be packing the camera, but how often do your photos do your treasured memories justice? We’ve all seen plenty of holiday snap horrors. Overexposed, full of glare, kids squinting into the sunlight or hidden in shadow. I’ll be honest, it can be particularly hard to get great shots in the summer sun.

So in this guide - the second in my season by season series – I’m going to share a few insider photography tips and tricks to help you come home this summer with frame-worthy holiday snaps worth you’ll be proud to show your family and friends.

What camera to take with you

Whatever camera you take you want to make sure it’s one you’re familiar with. You don’t want to spend precious time with your nose in an instruction book or fiddling with the settings for so long before each shot that everyone else gets bored. Here are a few options:

DSLR. Of course if you’ve got a DSLR camera you’re going to want to take it. But don’t feel like you have to use it all the time. Pick a few times to use it and the rest of the time go with a point and shoot camera, or your smart phone.

Smart phone. Parents confess to me all the time that they have a fancy DSLR but their smart phone is the camera they end up using the most because it's easy and they always have it on them. I think they expect that as a photographer, I’ll frown on this, and are always surprised to hear that I love taking pictures with my iPhone and use it daily to photograph my kids.

Even I only take my DLSR out with me once or twice a week whereas, just like everyone else, my iPhone is always on me. For instant editing and sharing it can't be beaten, plus it's a great camera for capturing everyday moments. Of course, the quality is nowhere near what I get with my "real" camera, but emotionally some of the shots I’ve taken with it are some of my absolute favorites.

A camera for the kids. Letting the kids have a go is a great way to enjoy a fresh perspective. Giving everyone a chance to take pictures means your photos will encapsulate the holiday from the whole family’s experience. Whether they take silly selfies or crazy creative shots, letting them loose with a camera will fill your photo albums with fun.

Of course you probably won’t want them messing around with your expensive DSLR, so consider getting them their own camera. My recommendations are:

•    The Vtech Kidizoom. For younger children, you need something durable and simple. This crushproof, shockproof, dustproof and very easy to use kids camera even has built-in shake reduction so little hands can still achieve steady shots.
•    A waterproof camera - disposable or otherwise – for a beach or pool holiday is a great option because it will also serve as a good rugged camera the kids can use and abuse.

What to photograph when on holiday

Tell a story. In 20 years time when you flick through the pages of your holiday photo album you want to be transported back to those moments. So capture the details – the street signs, your children’s feet in the sand, objects you find on the beach. I know we all love smiley shots of our kids’ faces, but you don’t need to include them in every single photo! A whole album of the same kind of shots, don’t tell a story.

Capture natural as well as posed moments. This is good to remember, especially when traveling, when it can be easy to fall back on the habit of looking for posed photos at every location. By all means try to get a few, but don’t forget to capture natural interactions and genuine emotions as well.

Taken with my smart phone on a lovely sunny day

“Sometimes the trip to a location can be just as interesting as the destination itself. Shoot images that tell the story of how you got to your vacation destination. Shoot the local fruits in a farmers market or fishing nets on a boat dock or even trinkets in tourist shops that have the name of the destination. Small detail shots help to remind you of what you saw and tell your viewer a little about the location,” Chicago based photographer, Kevin Kuster.

Make sure you are in the photo too. I know many of us hate having our picture taken but you know who your kids will want to see in the pictures when they look back in years to come – you! They don’t care if your hair isn’t perfect, or you’ve just woken up. If you don’t get in the shot you’re cutting yourself out of the special memories you’re creating, which let’s face it as just as much for them to enjoy as for you.

So put aside your self-consciousness and get yourself in plenty of the shots. Ask a fellow holiday maker, or a waiter to take a picture or give your other half the camera to take photos of you playing games in the pool or building sand castles. Your kids will love seeing these pictures when they’re older.

Don’t forget the family pets. A dog running through the surf makes for a fun and interesting shot.

My top tips for taking great photos on your summer holiday

1.    Stay out of the midday sun! One of the worst times to take photographs is at midday when the sun is directly overhead.
2.    Shoot at sunrise and sunset. You get the best natural light at these times of days – it is soft, warm and flattering. The warm, golden light of early evening is a particularly good time to shoot.
3.    Shoot in the shade. If you are out in the middle of a sunny day avoid the harshness of the sun altogether by shooting in the shade of a tree, canopy or the shadows of a building.
4.    Use a reflective surface. An alternative to flash (see 8 below) is to use something white which can be used as a reflector – a white bedsheet, beach towel or muslin. Get someone to hold it up to lighten areas of shadow by bouncing light back on to the face of whoever you are photographing.
5.    Keep the sun behind your child. When I talk about this in my workshops nine times out of ten people think they should have the sun behind themselves, but to avoid those squinty eyed shots position yourself so the sun is behind your child.
6.    Spot Metering. Getting more technical here, but if your camera has spot metering you can overcome exposure problems by using it. Spot metering is a feature that enables you to tell the camera which part of the image you want to be well exposed and it will adjust accordingly to optimise that spot. This is particularly useful in bright light when you want to get a shady area exposed well – for instance when your kids have the sunlight behind them. You can meter on their shadowy faces. The downside of this is that the background will probably be overlit, but if that doesn’t matter then this is a good option.
7.    Use flash. Personally I don’t like using flash much at all and much prefer using a softer way to illuminate as explained above (see 4). However, if you are struggling with a bright background and your subjects are in shadow then by all means try using flash. Here are some tips if you do:

• Try to bounce the flash. Almost all digital cameras have a built-in flash, and the ability to override the auto flash mode by switching it on even when there’s enough light to shoot without it. With DSLRs you can use a more powerful flashgun to bounce light off a ceiling or wall when inside for a more diffused illumination.
• Use flash exposure compensation. If your camera has this feature you can reduce the flash output by one or two stops to get a more subtle effect.
• If your subjects do look overexposed and you can’t reduce the flash strength try moving back a little from your subject and using your zoom to get a tighter frame as this will reduce the impact of the flash.
  When using flash, make sure your shutter speed stays at or below the maximum flash sync speed of the camera (typically around 1/250).
• Use a lens hood. Not only does this help with colour saturation but it also reduces the risk of flare – stray light hitting the front lens – which lowers image contrast and reduces colour saturation.

8.    Use a polarising filter. One of the most useful DSLR lens accessories that you can add to a digital camera is a polarising filter. Without getting too technical, a polariser changes the way your camera sees and treats light by reducing reflections and glare – making colours more vibrant. It’s a great tool to keep on hand for holiday shots – the blue skies will be richer and the ocean crystal clear.

To learn more about camera settings how and when to use them come to my photography workshop – the next one is on Saturday, 2nd August.
 
How to compose a great photo

Be creative. Think differently about how you compose your photos to mix things up and create more interesting images. For instance instead of putting your main subject – your child or a landmark – in the centre of the frame as you usually do, place them off-centre. Focus on your child and then recompose the shot. Here are a few other ideas:
•    I like to mix up my travel shots by shooting a few ‘from where I stand’ style perspectives to put the viewer in my shoes.
•    Capture different aspects of your holiday from start to finish. As well as those wide scenic shots we all love include small detail shots like interesting shells on the beach, and use a large aperture to make them really stand out. To compensate for the bright light use a faster shutter speed.

Move in close. This is the one technique that will make the biggest difference to the quality of your photos. You want your subject to fill the frame.

Taken with my DSLR using a large aperature f-stop 2.8 and fast shutter speed of 1/640s, iso 100 at 70mm

Get down to eye level with the kids. This is my biggest tip for getting great shots of children. I see so many photos of kids taken when standing and shooting down at them. The result is unflattering pictures that are cold and distant. It might be more effort, or feel odd to squat down or sit on the floor but the results will be well worth it. Putting yourself physically at the same level as the kids offers a much more interesting view of their world, and creates far more personal and memorable photos.

At the beach, watch the horizon. In wide open spaces with an unbroken horizon one of the most common problems I see in photos is a sloping horizon ruining the shot. Work hard to keep your horizon straight.
 
When you get home - selecting, editing and printing your photos

I am shocked by the number of people who never print any of their photos. In this digital age when we’re aren’t forced to pay to print photos so we can see them, we take picture after picture that stay hidden on our computer or hard drive.

We take so many photos now – it’s so easy and it’s free – that eventually the thought of wading through them all to edit them or select any for printing becomes too much of a headache. Sound familiar?

So here’s my solution to help your photos see the light of day:

Discard 95% of your photos. Of the hundreds of pictures you may take on your holiday I guarantee only about 40 to 60 of them will be ones you want to look again. So don’t put it off – as soon as you get back go through your photos and delete any that aren’t great because they’re blurred, eyes are shut of they are exactly the same as the shot before.

This may seem harsh but ultimately avoids storing hundreds of terrible photos that you never look at again. A small selection of your best shots is far more enjoyable to look at for you, and everyone else you show your photos to.

“The reason most people hate looking at family vacation pictures is because there are too many bad ones to look through. Only show your absolute best images to your audience. It has been said that the biggest difference between an amateur and a professional photographer is that the professional only shows their best work whereas an amateur shows everything.” Kevin Kuster

Edit your images. Nearly every professional photograph you look at has been edited in some way. So have the best iPhone photos. It's one of the reasons apps like Instagram are so popular.

If you do take pictures with your iPhone these are the apps I recommend for editing your shots:
•    Camera+. Has great filters and best of all, you can adjust their strength as well as easily layer them on top of each other.
•    Snapseed. Allows you to adjust traditional photo editing controls such as brightness, contrast, and saturation. Applying a bit of vignetting can also really improve your photographs as it will focus the eye automatically on the lighter part of the photograph, your subject.

On your desktop computer, any basic photo editing software such as iPhoto, Windows Live Photo Gallery or Picasa will give you those same controls.

Printing your pictures. There are some great online tools for printing. Photobox is great. Another is Pastbook.com which lets you directly upload images from Instagram and Facebook.

However if you want photo quality paper then your best option is Blurb books which also offer a direct upload from many apps. They do great little soft cover books which are inexpensive and great for holiday albums.

Whichever you use, if you can get two books printed, one for the kids to look through and one to keep nicely on the shelf for adults.

So that’s it. I hope you found this guide valuable and that you already feel more confident that you’ll come back from this year’s summer holiday with photos that truly represent the special time you had. Happy holidays!

Remember if you are not sure how to use your camera please sign-up for my Photography for Parents Workshop – the next one is happening on Saturday, 2nd August.

Of course if you really want to make it easy on yourself book me for a mini summer session and let me do all the hard work for you!

Join my mailing list to make sure you receive my DIY Photography autumn guide.