Photographing Your Kids around New York City
As a new parent, documenting your kids’ lives is an important part of the parenting process — you want to have the memories in digital form to look back at and to show your child when they’re older. However, in the first few years of a kids life this could crack your budget because there’re so many moments you’ll want a photographer to capture — the birth, the Christening, the “official” family portraits, the first birthday, etc. The most budget-friendly thing you can do in this instance is ditch the photographer and whip out the powerful camera that’s right in your pocket/purse 24/7.
Over the past decade (since the arrival of the first iPhone), smart phone cameras have become quite a force in the photography world — some people have made careers of “smart-phone photography.”
However, when shooting pictures with a smart phone, there are some things to keep in mind.
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A smart phone can’t truly replace the quality brought by a picture taken with a DSLR (example above), but it’s still a decent, cost-effective alternative.
Lighting
A great picture with a smart phone is really all about the lighting — no phone camera on the market holds well under low light. And do not under any circumstances use your flash — the only thing worse than a low-light image is an image with flash. The flash furthers the pixilation of the image — making it blurrier. This is something to keep in mind when debating whether to hire a photographer or not. For example, Churches are usually darker and don’t have much natural light pouring in — so for a Christening and/or Baptism you should consider hiring a photographer. But for something like a kid’s birthday — which is often outdoors, save your money and just use your phone. Chances are all the parents there will also be taking photos so you’ll have a wide array of photos by the end.
- Movement
Kids aren’t going to sit still for a long period of time — they’re impatient and want to play so for those photos with a lot of movement consider using the burst feature on your phone instead of just taking one individual picture. For most phones this just means holding down the shutter button.
- Close-Ups
Just as I said not to use your phone flash, also do not ever use the zoom feature on your phone. The second you take your two fingers and zoom in — the picture quality reduces by a significant amount. If you’re having an event where you want intimate-close up pictures, but don’t want to physically be up close shoving a camera in people’s face, then hire a photographer. There’s a reason the lens on a DSLR is so long — it’s the difference between digital zoom and optical zoom. Optical zoom doesn’t sacrifice the quality of the image — digital zoom just blurs and pixelates an image.
While a phone camera cannot be matched with the superior quality of a DSLR, you’d want someone who knows what they’re doing when dealing with a camera like that which would involve a photographer — but as said above, hiring a photographer every time you want a good photo is just not realistic or financially responsible.
Author: Aaron Bharucha