This post is sponsored by Olympus Imaging Australia.
Many of you already know that Jenni and I met in antenatal class over 8 years ago and we’ve been best friends ever since! We loved to plan play dates with our mother’s group and started to document the fun we were having on Facebook, this quickly transformed into our blog. We often laugh at all the original photos from 8 years ago, our photography skills sure have come along way since those days and we really wish we had invested more time in capturing those cherished years the best way we could.
Today we’ll be sharing our top 7 tips we wish we had know before we had kids! I suppose we’ll be sharing the mistakes we made in the hopes it saves you from making the same ones.
One of our biggest regrets is the time and money we spent on ‘fun’ photography apps with all those crazy filters, frames and overlays. Thanks to Facebook’s memories we get weekly reminders of just how dated those apps and filters have become. We wish we had just left the original photos alone or at least made sure we saved original copies before all the editing. Don’t get us wrong we still love to use photo editing apps but we will never make the mistake of not keeping an original. See below just one example from 5 years ago and the same best friends a couple of months ago. We know now how much we would have loved them both to be unfiltered and natural.
This was another big regret for us, especially with our second born children – iPads had just come onto the market and we used them for nearly all our home photos as it was easy to capture and then edit them using all the crazy apps we discussed above. We wish we had used a quality camera like our Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark II to capture the originals and then transfer them to our devices if we wished to edit/share them. Did you know that you can do all of that with just one touch of a button on our Olympus cameras? They sync quickly and easily with our phones or tablets and that guarantees we get an amazing quality shot every. single. time. You can check us out using this feature on this Facebook video we recently shot.
You will often hear photographers talk about the rule of thirds; if you divide any canvas into thirds horizontally and vertically, the intersection of those dividing lines will often be the areas of greatest visual interest. After using the rule of thirds a lot in our own photography, we can see the truth in this, it’s something we wish we had known about earlier on. Also, look for different angles instead of always taking a front on shot and don’t be afraid to get in close to your subject.
Golden hour – one hour before sunset and one hour after sunrise is the best time to plan an outdoor photoshoot, this will ensure you don’t have harsh sunlight throwing shadows all over your subject. Overcast days can also be great as the sun is less harsh on these days also.
If you’re shooting indoors find a spot with a lot of natural lighting; sit close to a window and use some white cardboard or a car sun visor to reflect extra light on your subject. Taking time to think about lighting can turn an average photo into something amazing.
This one sounds obvious but remember to keep your photo shoots FUN by telling jokes, making silly noises, laughing and generally getting them to relax. We try really hard not to utter the words “say cheese!’. Also, take advantage of your camera’s settings – we use the ‘Sports Mode’ on our Olympus often when shooting our kids because they move so fast and it enables us to capture them without the blur.