I love my camera.
It's big, it's heavy, it has super fast focus, performs beautifully in low light, and it helps me create gorgeously crisp high-resolution portraits for my clients' (and my own) walls and albums.
But the camera I use 90% of the time while hanging out with my kids is my iPhone. (the other 10% is my little Fujifilm X-T1)
Although I'm never going to blow up an iPhone photo for my walls, it still brings me joy to photograph my children every day, and preserve those precious memories of their childhood.
Recently a friend asked me for some tips on how to improve her iPhone photography skills: 'Whenever I tried to take photos of my kids, they either give me this horrible 'cheese' face, or they run away. Half my photos are blurry. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother!'
I started talking, giving her tips on lighting, camera angle, anticipating moments, composition, etc. As I talked, I realised that there is a lot of tips I can share with parents to help them take better photos of their kids with whichever camera they have on hand.
So, I have decided to make a series of short videos with my iPhone to give parents tips on how to take great photos of your kids without a fancy big camera.
This first video shares my number one tip on how to capture your children’s natural smiles.
Give me a thumbs up (or share) if you enjoy this video! :-)
How To Take Great Photos Of Your Kids With Your Iphone
Tip #1 - How to capture genuine expressions of kids rather than just the 'cheesy' face.
Video Caption File:
- Hi, my name's Jina.
I've been specializing in children's photography
for the last seven years.
I have a lot of tips to share with you.
My number one tip that I'm gonna share with you today is to never ask children to smile at a camera.
Why not?
Well, I'm going to ask my two little monkeys to help me.
All right, so my kids are going to help me demonstrate (laughs) how to 'do' photos.
Who's gonna go first?
- Me!
- [Jina] All right, Zoe.
Now, stand right there, yep, good.
All right Zoe, now smile. (laughs)
Smile at the camera.
What song is Mica singing?
- Poop, poop, poop.
(Jina laughs)
(guitar struming)
- (Jina) What's that.
What's that? (laughs)
Is that,
Is that a baby poo poo song?
- (Jina) Mica.
Stand up straight for me.
Now,
smile at the camera.
(Jina laughs)
(clown music)
Oh Mica!
What's that?
- The Floss.
- (Jina) You're doin' the Floss.
Let me see the Floss.
Oh that's great.
It's a lovely Floss.
How quickly can you go?
Oh, that's really quick!