Tips for Taking Candid Photos of Children

Candid photos of children can be lots of fun, not only to take, but also to look at in years to come. To get good candid shots, you will need to have your camera handy at all times and take lots of shots. Some may be no good, but if you have a digital camera this won’t matter; you can simply delete them. Don’t make a lot of fuss when you are taking candid shots, or the children will become self-conscious and may end up running away every time they see you trying to point and click.

Never show your really candid shots of children to others in front of the children, while laughing about them. They’ll hate it and refuse to pose in the future. Children have dignity too. If you make sure it’s fun for the children, they will enjoy it and be more co-operative. With older children, you can also point out the things you did to make the shot more special. This will get them interested and help train them to take good shots of their own.

Some posed shots will be necessary, but try to make them a little more creative than just standing in a straight line. How about posing two children on a tricycle? They will be having fun and concentrating on more than just posing for the shot. You would normally have the older child with his feet on the pedals and the younger one standing in the tray, but try reversing this. For starters, the younger child will be shortest and so should be in front. But reversing their positions in this way creates unusual expressions on their faces that are fun to catch on film

Remember to get up close and personal for great candid shots of kids. Also get down to their level to prevent distortion. When the pictures are of babies, making eye contact will aid in interaction and expression. You want to avoid that vague look that lots of babies have when there is no one to focus on. But if your want their expression to be one of absorption in a toy or some other thing that intrigues them, try and stay out of their focus. Wait until baby is entirely focused on the other object, then click.

If the baby is moving, follow the movement with your camera and gently squeeze the button rather than clicking sharply. This will help to prevent blurring the shot with camera shake. If you miss that great smile, it could be because of shutter lag. This is the time between when your finger began to squeeze the button and when the shutter finished moving.

Top 10 Embarrassing Childhood Photos

OK, so we all have them -- embarrassing photographs our folks took when we were four years old and still sucking our thumb. They show up at our wedding, when we bring a date home, and always when we really wish they wouldn't!

So, here are my top ten lists of embarrassing photo opportunities.

1. The Infamous Tub Shot

Everyone I know has the embarrassing bathtub photo shot. You're lathered in soap and your overly large seven-year-old head is covered in shampoo. This is always the number one most embarrassing photo that parents can take of their kids. They can up the ante by having one of your siblings in the tub with you.

2. Naked Shots

Stemming from the tub shot comes the buck-naked embarrassing photographs we all have from when we are kids. One of the best ones I ever saw was of an ornery four-year-old who refused to wear anything but his red cowboy boots. His future wife will laugh over that one when it shows up on the slideshow at their wedding.

3. The Blankie Shot

There is nothing wrong with having a blankie, but this photograph becomes extremely embarrassing when you are 10 years old and still wildly clinging to your blankie as you leave for the fifth grade!!

4. Nose-Picking Shots

Now, these nose-picking shots are always super-embarrassing photo opportunities. No child can make it through the first 12 years of life without picking its nose at some point. To get the most embarrassing photo, wait until they are really digging deep for a gold mine!

5. Pimple Shots

Not that pimples are funny, but they do make for a super-embarrassing photo opportunity! Nothing is worse than being all dressed up for your first homecoming dance and then realizing your pimples will be in the photo with you!

6. Braces Shots

There is just something so embarrassing about a photograph showcasing a mouthful of braces. Of course, as silver braces slowly disappear off the face of the earth, this simple and embarrassing photo opportunity is quickly disappearing.

7. Clothing Shots

Ok, so we may think we are at the height of fashion, but when you look back 20 years into the past at some clothing choices you or your parents made for you, they can be a awesomely embarrassing photograph! I have a terrible photo of me in brown bell-bottoms, a brown lion t-shirt, and some bright blue Pumas! Yikes. There is always the infamous I am wearing every piece of clothing I got for Christmas at once photo that shows up occasionally. Now that one is a great blackmail shot!

8. Hairdo Shots

Hairstyles change and quickly become one of the most embarrassing features of past photographs. Afros, puffy bangs, mullets, and more -- oh my!

9. Teeth shots

Who doesn't have a shot of them missing their two front teeth. These shots are not embarrassing in the least. The embarrassing photograph comes when one of your missing teeth has partially grown in or even grown in crooked! This awkward stage in everyone's life makes for some wonderful blackmail photos later in life!

10. Food Shots

My final most embarrassing photograph opportunity is the food shot all little kids have. Bowls of spaghetti turned upside down on the head are classics. You can't pass up the shot of the one-year-old sticking his face into the middle of his birthday cake, either!

The Most Embarrassing Childhood Photos

Why is it that parents always bring out the most embarrassing pictures of us when we least want or need to have them shown?

When you bring that special someone home for the first time, or all the guys come over for the big game, these are both prime times for your most embarrassing childhood photos!

Everyone has at least one bathtub shot; soap suds everywhere, with a yellow rubber ducky or a GI Joe or maybe a submarine, or -- even worse -- with your siblings lined up like a chorus line. Mine was an old tin bathtub in front of the wood stove; my hair was full of soap, and I looked a lot like a clown!

Then there are those terrible shots of you naked! Who in the world would want his future wife to see a picture of him in the all together chasing the dog around the back yard or, even worse, with the dog chasing him!

Kids will pick their noses, and if you wait until they are digging deep, you are sure to have ammunition for years to come. A picture of your child when she is playing in the mud, covered head to toe, is the best; a little in the mouth never hurts either!

Halloween costumes for a three-year-old can be great for embarrassment later in life. How many 15-year-old boys want their new friends to see them dressed like a chicken or frog?

Every kid thinks they are the height of fashion, but I have several pictures of me as a youngster, that I would much rather no one ever see. Bell bottoms were in, along with Nehru jackets, love beads, and flowers in the hair.

My mom has a picture of the three of us girls wearing our stripped tights, and ruffled hats that we got for Christmas. That is a great picture and believe me when I say that everyone I have ever brought home has seen that picture at one time or another! My favorite is of my grandson when he fell asleep in a plate of food at his fourth birthday. I love the picture, but I am sure there will come a day when he won't.

How Special Lenses Can Improve Your Photos

Many cameras are built to take special additional lenses that screw or snap on. If yours doesn’t, don’t worry; the lens it was made with will be a generic type that will do most jobs reasonably well. If you want to get into using extra lenses, there are several different types.

A wide-angle lens can be a useful addition to your camera, especially for landscape shots. It can reach out to each side and gather in lots more than your normal lens and indeed, even more than the human eye can see. It will be able to focus on foreground and background, ensuring clarity of detail all over, however, if there is to be a specific subject to keep the focus on wide-angle lenses are not the ones to use.

Zoom lenses have a wide range of applications, from landscape to portraiture, allowing the photographer to either increase or decrease magnification of the subject. Their only drawback is that they are not suited to conditions where the light is dim, due to their narrow aperture. Many cameras come with a zoom feature already installed, but digital zoom lenses are quite different to optical zoom lenses.

While an optical lens magnifies the image, the digital lens actually enlarges and crops the image in the viewfinder. This can result in a poor quality image due to the low resolution, compared to the optical lens. So if you are after a camera with a zoom feature, go for one with an optical zoom; you’ll get better quality pictures.

A telephoto lens is similar to the zoom lens in that it is used for enlargement of the photo, but it works differently. While a zoom lens magnifies the subject, a telephoto lens actually brings the subject ‘closer’; effectively reducing the distance between the subject and the camera. A telephoto lens will show greater detail than the human eye could detect at the same distance.

Cheaper cameras often have a fixed, focal length lens. They sometimes do the work of a wide-angle lens - though not always - but are better in low light conditions. Many newbies have found they learn the basics of photography composition more quickly with this sort of lens simply because they have to put more thought into getting a quality shot.

The macro lens – often a built-in feature with today’s digitals - is for close-ups without distortion. Originally, it was an extension lens for optical cameras.

The fish-eye lens was developed for work in astronomy. It can take the wide-angle of the sky needed by those who study the stars. Landscape photographers who like the distortion of the curve often use it.

Front of lens accessory is a clip-on tool that mimics a lens. It gives additional options for a camera not built to take an additional lens, but without the quality a real lens would give.