Human emotions are best represented in close-up portraits than picture of people from head to foot in a certain or non-certain environment. But to give a contra-example: sadness is a human emotion; sadness is felt be the one who looks at a picture in which a man is sitting next to a grave.

When thinking about capturing human emotions in Photography, you should make the difference between spontaneous and classic. Classic is when you tell your model to “play” a certain emotion, but, in Photography, acting will never have the same impact as spontaneous natural feelings captured in the reality of the surrounding.

Joy, sadness, desperate, fear, etc transfigures the face of people and if well represented and captured, we fell a bit of what they felt. Think for a bit at the impressive pictures taken in Iran, Africa, India – people in war, people dying of hunger: the expression on those people’s faces make the word shake.

Emotions vary in intensity and, depending on the subject’s personality, they will be more or less shown. Sometimes it’s all about being at the right time in the right place. But still there is a trick for emotions hunters: photograph people before they notice you are around. Technically, use the zoom to get the attention closer to the face.

Tags: portrait photography, portraits, emotions, emotions in photography

Preparing to Shoot

Honest emotions (tip1) is the expression that best describes what we feel when we look at children. This is what a kid picture should capture. But, just like pets, young kids are most of the time restless and with no patience for a shooting session. Otherwise, why do a shooting session if you focus on spontaneous emotions(tip 2)?

Another tip would be to collaborate with the kids (tip 3): go to the park and offer them some chocolate or candy. This will bring up even more joy on their faces. They will look towards the camera with no fear (and maybe will even ask to play with it). However, at the beginning, they will try to get attention by playing a circus… but after a short while they will get bored of that and will finally get natural – so be patient (tip 5). If a child is there with the parents, talk to them, gain trust (tip 6).

Camera Requirements

The unexpected movement of the children is the reason why your power-up time and shutter lag should be minimal (tip 7) (the laugh, the cry, the joy won’t wait for your camera to be prepared) and the shutter speed under 0,5 sec (tip 8 ) (to prevent motion blur that may occur while the child moves).

If the lighting conditions won’t allow you to have such a short shutter speed, adjust the ISO setting (tip 9) to a higher level. Most compact cameras have a preset shooting mode for Kids&Pets (tip 10) which will automatically do all the settings for you if you don’t want (or can not) do it manually. The movement of the kids will probably also result in having problems with the focus (especially if you try a narrow DOF like in portraiture). This means that each shot will be focused differently and that should happen fast. The auto-focus is definitely the best choice (tip 10).

Shooting and Later Edits

First of all, remember that you are taller than the children and by shooting from your eye level will not result on a good perspective (tip 11).

Get down to their level and be inside their world (tip 12). Most of all, the eyes of the kids are large and beautiful; therefore you will want to place them in a point of interest of the picture for enhancing the face value (tip 13). Sometimes, to do so, get closer and if getting closer will not help, use zoom (tip 14).

Happy kids pictures always turn out good in vivid colors (tip 15) (later on you can even give the picture a warmer tone (tip 16)), but, like any broken rule, black&white – see above – (tip 17) works also.

The pictures of kids being all over the parents and parents taking care of the kids (tip 18) are good ideas for shooting too.

Tags: photographing kids, photodraphing children, kids and pets, spontaneous, emotions, photographing kids tips, Tips for Photographing Kids

Shooting against the light has always been a tricky thing in photography: if you choose to set a longer exposure or just to increase the exposure compensation in order to have plenty of light over the near subject, the background will appear burned (overexposed). The other way around, if you choose the right exposure for the background (the usual auto or program mode will do that), then your subject will appear too dark (underexposed).

The solutions I will present depends on the situation in which you will find yourself. Let’s look at them.

Solution 1 – Use Flash Even in a Sunny Day

If you are close enough to your subject, like for instance in portrait photography, using the flash even if it is a very sunny day will fix the problem in a very simple and effective way.

Solution 2 – D-light Function

But what if your subject is too far away (like far buildings) and you can’t or just don’t want to try a different angle with the sun behind you? Or what if it is night and a lamp illuminates the place? Will you be pleased with the overexposed lamp due to the long exposure needed in night conditions? Some new cameras (HP Photosmart R727, R827, R927, Nikon D80, Nikon Coolpix S50 and S50c, S200, S500, P5000, the Nikon L series, ) come with a function called D-Lighting (or adaptive lighting). This function will solve the problem automatically.

Solution 3 – Photoshop Manipulation

But what if your camera does not have this function? The salvation in this case is a Photoshop manipulation.
When shooting, make several frames with different exposures. In my example (with Canon PowerShot A520), the dark photo was made with: aperture F 3.2, exposure time 0.100 sec; and the light one with: aperture F 3.2, exposure time 0.400 sec. It’s much recommended to have a tripod and take the pictures using it because of 2 reasons: a brighter picture may require a longer exposure time (if you don’t want to deal with a lot of noise you will prefer a longer time instead of higher ISO and aperture) so you need to avoid camera shake (no matter how steady your hands are, night condition will always require a tripod), and the second reason: the frames should be taken from the same angle and viewpoint. Unfortunately, at the time I shot the images in this example, I did not have a tripod so the bright image is blured due to camera shake, but I somehow managed to take quite similar frames.
In a Photoshop document, place the 2 frames as different layers in such way that the darker one will be under the lighter one.
Choose the eraser with a size bigger than the lamp (or whatever your overexposed object is), low hardness and low opacity as shown in the figure. This will softly erase the area around the lamp in the lighter frame revealing the darker frame behind in such way that the 2 images will come together graduated, not suddenly. But the inner portion of the lamp from the darker image is not yet fully revealed. Change the eraser option like this: smaller size to fit only the interior of the lamp, full 100% opacity and 100% hardness.

Once you erase the red marked area, you will notice that even if the pictures come together softly, the colors are not the same. You can adjust the gradient by moving onto the dark image layer, in the menu “Image” -> “Adjustments” select Selective Color. Play around with the “neutrals” until you are satisfied with the color gradient around the lamp. When all this is done, go to the menu “Layer” and select “Merge Visible” (or press Shift + Ctrl+E). This step will merge the 2 images and now, if you are still not satisfied with this result, you can play around with blur tool and healing brush before saving the final image.

If you are interested in digital cameras with D-light function check them on Amazon. They are quite amazing and useful.

- HP PhotoSmart R727
– HP Photosmart R827
– HP Photosmart R927
– Nikon D80 Kit
– Nikon Coolpix with Vibration Reduction Zoom
– Nikon Coolpix S50c 7 is Wifi Capable
– Nikon Coolpix S200
– Nikon Coolpix S500, Vibration Reduction Zoom
– Nikon Coolpix P5000, Vibration Reduction Zoom
– Nikon Coolpix from 74$

When you go out shooting, be sure to take one of your Izod shirts, my favorite brand.

Tags: D-Lighting, Adaptative Lighting, Photoshop, Exposure Correction, Shooting Against the Light