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Get great shots in low light

Bring your lighting to life with a flashgun

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5 portrait ideas to help your older kids look cool!

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Portraits

Perfect poses for your teen portraits Love taking pictures of your teenage kids but want some ideas on how to pose them? Look no further…

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n issue 85 of Digital SLR, we walked you through the basics of taking cool images of your teenage kids. After all, when your children get a little older, they can become reluctant to pose for the camera, so it’s your job to come up with some different ideas, try some new locations and make it fun to smile for the camera.

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arrange in height One sure-fire way to grab a great portrait of multiple teens is to line them up in height order. You can try biggest to smallest, but to balance the frame, stand the tall kids at either end and have the smaller teens in the middle. You’ll be surprised at how much of a difference this will make to the feel of the photo.

Learn portrait techniques Want to capture cool pictures of your older kids? Grab a copy of our latest issue to learn all the skills you’ll need.

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Portraits

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Celebrate their skills The most natural poses come when the subject isn’t even thinking about what they are doing. So, instead of rigid, forced poses, try getting portraits as your teenage daughter rides her horse or your not-solittle son bangs in a goal at football practice.

If your teen is on the move, remember to switch to AI Servo (often called Continuous Focus), as this will help your autofocus system track them and deliver a sharp image.

TOP TIP

Match your backgrounds to the seasons – for example, brown leaves in autumn

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Include props One of the common complaints from your subject will be that they don’t know what to do with their hands. The solution is to hand them a prop – this can be anything from a handy umbrella to their school books. Failing that, rope in the family dog and ask your teenage to hold the pooch still. Just make sure you focus on your subject’s eyes and not the pet’s or you may find that your subject’s eyes fall out of focus.

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Shoot from above When you raise your shooting position and take images from above, the result is that you see less of your subject. So, if your teenager is really struggling to look natural, whip out the stepladder and try a few frames looking down at your teen. You’ll still capture the upper third of their body without having to worry about awkward-looking arms and legs.

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Level up the heights You can choose to arrange your teens into height order to help them pose, but if you want to try a different shot, then an idea is to level out all those differences in the subject’s height. As we know, when kids hit their teens, some of them shoot up, but others take longer to catch up. However, sit all your subjects down on a bench and you’ll see that for the most part, they all look the same size.

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Put the weight onto one leg One of the easiest ways to find a natural pose is to ask your subject to shift their weight onto one leg. This shift of weight distribution will usually force a shoulder to drop, which looks good as a pose. Try asking your subject to put one foot in front of the other and then rest on their trailing leg. All these poses will require a little practise, but the results will definitely be worth the effort.

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night-time

Light up the darkness

The nights are drawing in, but that doesn’t mean the photography has to stop.

In fact, as we explain in Issue 85’s Ten Minute Masterclass, grabbing amazing shots in low light can be made very easy indeed

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o, if you’ve checked out all the jargon-free advice in our magazine about how you can heat up your photography when the sun goes down, you’re hopefully now busy charging the batteries, clearing the memory cards and itching for dusk to arrive so you can pick up your kitbag and head out to take some amazing images.

learn skills in ten minutes Our latest issue will walk you through the basics of night photography in less time than it takes to boil an egg.

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However, what sort of subjects should you go in search for when the sun dips below that horizon?

We’re going to serve up five great scenes to line up in front of your lens. Regardless of where you live in the country, you shouldn’t have to travel too far to find our suggested subjects, so grab your coat, it’s time to take off that lens cap…

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catch the moon You don’t have to be near a city to capture a great low-light subject, in fact with some subjects it’s often better if you are away from all the light pollution. Instead of artificial scenes, take inspiration from mother nature and capture a great shot of the moon. Set the camera up on your tripod and, if you have one, attach your telezoom.

Line up the moon in your frame and experiment with exposure compensation to make sure you capture the detail of the craters as sometimes a bright moon can flummox the camera’s metering system.

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Fun at fairgrounds One of the best locations for low-light photography, and not just because you can stuff yourself with candyfloss and toffee apples. A long shutter speed will transform the lights of a ride into fantastic streaks and because there’s lots of ambient light, you’ll be able to see what you’re doing and won’t be fiddling round with your camera. Try to find rides with different coloured lights to add a whole spectrum of colours in the frame.

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Classic churches Churches are a fantastic low-light subject. Why? Well for starters, you don’t have to drive further than a couple of miles to find your nearest spire or tower. Better still however is the fact that most churches are lit up after dark, so the textured walls and ancient architecture is spotlighted, ready for your camera. It’s worth bearing a few things in mind…

Firstly, watch out for your colour balance – church lights are often very orange, and you may wish to switch to Tungsten white-balance to counteract the colour cast. Next up, make sure you have permission to be on any private land – not only is it polite to ask permission, but it will save you explaining yourself to an angry policeman.

“make sure you have permission to be on any private land – you don’t want to have to explain yourself to the police”

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Oh Christmas trees It won’t be long before the Christmas trees go up in town squares up and down the country. A well-lit tree, with plenty of lights sparkling in the pitch black of night will make a fantastic subject. Try and include other subjects in the frame to show where the image was taken – our tree was snapped just outside St. Paul’s in London. Try turning the camera on its side to try a portrait shot as this makes the tree look even bigger in the frame.

TOP TIP

Keep batteries warm in your coat pockets – they lose power much faster in the cold

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Brilliant bridges Bridges offer two opportunities in one. Not only can you capture the picturesque design of the bridge, you can also capture the reflection of the subject in the water below. Try to find a busy bridge and you will be able to use a long exposure to create traffic trails of the cars and buses driving through. You’ll need a fairly wide-angle lens to capture a big bridge so if your 18-55mm kit lens won’t cut it, look to invest in a 10-20mm optic.

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Lighting tips

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Flash gels There are many accessories you can buy for your flashgun, from diffusers to soften the light, to extra battery packs so you can keep shooting for longer. However, one of the most effective accessories is a set of flash gels. The coloured plastic covers the flash head and adds a colour cast to the light blasted out from the unit.

Flash gels can be bought from just £10 or you can make your own using coloured sweet wrappers. In our example, we’ve used green gels to light the background in this scene.

tested: seven flashguns Pick up the latest issue to see which flash came out on top when we put seven units through their paces.

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Why you should buy a flashgun... today!

As you can discover in our main magazine, flashguns don’t have to be expensive. We’ll explain why there’s never been a better time to buy a flashgun and what this accessory can do for your photography

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ook at any pro photographer and the chances are that somewhere in their kitbag, alongside the prime lenses and nice camera body, will be at least one external flashgun. You see, while the popup flash on your camera is okay, it has nowhere near as much power as an external unit, and this lack of power limits the sort of images you can capture.

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Spending some cash on a flashgun will open the door to a world of creative images that you had only dreamt of capturing before, so don’t delay, buy one today.

We’ve tested seven affordable flashguns in the latest issue and there is a range of units to fit all budgets, so let’s take a look at what buying a flashgun could bring to your photography.

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Fill-in flash So, you’re out in the autumn sun taking pictures of the family. No need to use a flashgun eh? Well, not so fast – one of the problems of shooting in the daytime is that the sun can cause unpleasant shadows on your subject’s face. By using a flashgun and adding a little fill-in flash, the unit will quite literally illuminate and fill in all those ugly shadows to balance out the skin tones of your subject. Most cameras have the ability to adjust the power from the flashgun to make sure you don’t add too much or too little fill-in flash. Alternatively, you could always switch the flashgun to manual mode and fine-tune the exposure.

TOP TIP

The power of Offcamera flash can make your scene look like night, even when it is day

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Off-camera flash As the name suggests, this technique involves using the flashgun off the camera, instead of having it fixed to the camera. This technique is worth learning because it opens up more lighting options that can be far more creative than standard on-camera flash. Remember though, that you’ll need a flashgun that can be triggered either remotely from the camera, or via a wireless trigger. These triggers can cost from as little as £20 and are worth investing in if you will be shooting a fair amount of off-camera flash. Of course, you could connect the flash to the camera with cables, but you’ll always be tripping over them so they’re not a good idea.

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Night-time portraits If you’re out with your camera after dark, a flashgun will allow you to illuminate subjects that may have been otherwise underexposed. Better still, you’ll most likely be able to shoot photos like night-time portraits without the need for a tripod – thanks to that output of light, shutter speeds will be faster.

If you are using direct flash (with the flash pointed straight at the subject), be wary of red-eye, which is actually worse with kids than adults. If you do encounter this problem, bounce your flash up to soften the effect.

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Product pictures Ever visited those Internet auction sites? You’ll notice that the items that look the most professional have been shot on a clean white background and with an external flashgun (and a sheet of paper). You can recreate this technique to sell your items.

Place your product on a curved piece of paper (lean it against the wall if necessary). Set up the flashgun offcamera and point the head straight up to the ceiling so the light will bounce off and reflect down on your product.

Use manual mode, select a shutter speed of around 1/160sec (ISO 100) and increase your aperture until the background becomes white. Simple!

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