Embrace the Camera: Me and My Girl

One of my first blog posts, Getting in the Picture, is about using a tripod and wireless remote shutter release to try to get in more photos, rather than always being behind the camera. As the primary photography of the house, I end up in few of the photos we have of my family. Since participating the Simple Things Sunday link-up, I’ve discovered that Rebecca at Simple as That participates in another link-up called Embrace the Camera. The point of Embrace the Camera is to encourage us get in the photo with our loved ones, especially our kids. They’ll love having these photos one day.

I’ve been meaning to do more self-portrait photos with my kids, so I’m going to join the Embrace the Camera link-up as a way to get myself to actually do it. So here is my first post. Like the photos from December’s post, I took this photo using my camera on a tripod with a wireless remote shutter release. You can see the remote in my daughter’s hand. Like my son, she thought it was a hoot to push the button and make the camera go “click!” and after several shots she wanted to go look at them on the camera’s display screen.

It took a bit of trial-and-error, and a lot of deleting after we filled the disk, to get the focus right and to avoid cutting off the tops of our heads. (Maybe next time I’ll change it from continuous shooting mode to one shot mode; then when my daughter holds the trigger down, we won’t fill the disk so fast!) That’s the beauty of digital cameras, though; you can shoot away and delete anything that isn’t a keeper. Also, by using the remote shutter release and letting your kids run the show, you’re sure to get some fantastic smiles!

I definitely plan to do this more often and I’m going to use Rebecca’s list of “50 Photos to Take with Your Kids” for some inspiration. That will be my biggest challenge… getting creative with these shots. Thanks for visiting!

Getting in the Picture

If you’ve been around me long enough, you’ve probably noticed that I like to take pictures. A lot. You may have also noticed that most of these pictures are of my children, and if you’re my husband, you are often moderately annoyed by this. I can see how it can be bothersome…. me lugging around my camera, constantly interrupting the flow of whatever we’re doing to try to capture the moment. When at home, I usually have my camera in easy reach so I can pick it up at any time–and I often do during moments that may seem insignificant to most.

But, here’s the thing. I LOVE taking photos. When something special captures my eye… like good light, or a story unfolding before me, or a sweet but fleeting moment, I want to grab onto it.  I also really enjoy practicing, learning new techniques and improving my photography. I especially love it when someone looks at a photo I took and likes it. And finally… my kids are little now, but I know it’s not for long. I want to preserve every little detail of their childhoods. I want to remember how my son wrinkles up his nose and squints his eyes when he’s being silly, or what my daughter looks like when she looks up at me from just two and a half feet off the ground.

When I was younger I lived in the moment. But now that I have kids, and because they change so fast, it feels as if yesterday slipped out of my fingers before I really had a chance to savor it and tomorrow is coming up behind me like a freight train. So, if I photograph as many of these moments as I can before they zoom past me and are gone, I feel like I still have my fingers on them and that they’ve never really slipped out of my reach.

So, I’ve been taking a lot of pictures and I’ve really been studying photography and trying to improve my skills. As a result I already have many great photos of my kids, and they are only 3 and 1. The problem is, I am in few of these photos with them. Usually, if I’m in the picture, it’s because I’ve handed my camera over to someone else who probably said something like “How do I use this thing?” I also often forget that I have some custom setting set on my camera when I hand it over to the stand-in photographer, and as a result I end up with a not-so-great shot anyway because the settings weren’t right. How perfect would it be if I could take the photo and be in it at the same time?

Enter a tripod and wireless remote. Actually, I’ve had a tripod for years but it’s been sitting in its box in my basement. I used it maybe once or twice… a long time ago. But I read this article on tips for getting good family self portraits and I thought I’d give it a try. They recommended using a tripod along with a wireless remote shutter release, which aren’t expensive. All I needed to get was the remote, so I bought this one which was less than $25.

I’ve used the tripod/wireless remote combo several times lately. It’s actually a lot of fun. It takes a bit of experimentation, as I took several shots to get a few really good ones.  My son especially loves using the remote; you can see it in his hands in many of the photos. 🙂

Getting a good picture of me and my two kids together was a challenge, but I got a couple of good ones with each one individually. Here are some of my favorites.

And, as any 3-year-old would be, my son was smitten with the wireless remote. He had a lot of fun with it. The best part is, it elicited a very genuine smile from him, which is often difficult for me to do. Here are some favorites of the 50-100 photos that he took with the remote.

I wish the focus was on his mouth instead of his shirt in this one, but I still love it.

About a week later we did the same exercise–with the tripod and wireless remote–but this time we were outside in the back yard. Again, my son wanted the remote and I had countless throw-away shots. But this one was a keeper.