This weekend it's Easter, i'm sure you know that already dear reader but just in case ;)  

One important note of the day, my website is mobile friendly, check out it's new makeover here, the least you can do is go and admire it on your iPad or iPhone as it nearly made my eyes bleed until very late last night achieving that.

I've always thought that as a parent you should photograph your children and pets as often as humanly possible, of course you may think that it's easy for me to say that but anyone can take photos, not everything has to be technically perfect, to be honest not everything I take is technically perfect but it's about the moments isn't it?  So with that in mind I thought I would offer up a few photography tips and tricks I use in the hope that it'll help you take more photographs of those precious moments you have in your life every day.

1. Light is the very most important thing to note in photography for without it, well photographs are just going to be black aren't they?  For today just do one thing, watch the light, watch how it changes throughout the day.  You'll mainly find that the very best times are the hour that follows sunrise and the hour that proceeds sunset.  As the sun gets higher in the skies you'll find it gets harsher and the shadows get harder.   If that happens try to run into a shaded area.
2. Direction, again this is pretty light focused, I like to photograph people with their backs to the sun, you'll notice when you do this in the golden hours you end up with lovely light on the hair and you'll get great skin tones, one thing you should note with this is that you may need a touch of fill flash to illuminate faces, you never ever want to end up with panda eyes and whatever you do please don't make your kids face the sun in bright sunlight, can you say Squint?
3. If you can possibly avoid using flash at all ever then by all means do so, especially if it's the flash on the front of your phone, it's the harshest most awful kind of light and it's not kind to anyone ever, this is because of where the flash is, if you really want to use flash and you have the means then you want to take your flash off the camera in as many cases as possible.  I actually never use flash on camera anymore, the only time I ever use it is off camera to do clever things.
4. Don't ask your kids to pose or you'll miss out on the moments, the little things that they do, if you do want portrait photographs then hire a photographer, once a year is a lovely time to do update shots and if you have a great photographer they'll just get the kids having fun and doing stuff to with a few portraits thrown in for good measure, that's why I choose to photograph families in the places they love.
5. Sometimes it's not even about photographing their faces, when they grow up you'll want to remember those tiny hands they had or those cute shoes they always wore, sometimes the most beautiful photographs of children are not about looking at the camera
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

I've included a sprinkling of personal, professional, iphone and dslr in this article to give you a brief over view of whats possible in any kind of situation and something I'd just like to say is, yes I actually have total posers for children, I'm sure they weren't always that way but they've been photographed constantly for the last 10 or so years of their lives. Possibly it's a good thing to also say that if your kids ask them to take a photo, just do it because one day they won't want you to take their photo anymore!

And if all else fails you'll just have to hire a professional and if you're looking for a photographer in Newcastle then get in touch, I have a few spare sessions remaining over the bank holiday and I'm available all next week including Saturday 11th April which will be at Jesmond Dene.

I photographed a kids session on an iPhone 6... with a selfie stick!

It's a bit of a bonkers world isn't it dear reader and I may have been accused of being a slightly eccentric member of this population we have called humanity but that's ok, nothing wrong with being different!!

I guess I'd always been intrigued by the differences in cameras and there's been vast improvements in the quality of the images the humble iPhone is capable of putting out.

I was so flattered at the number of people who offered to entrust their children to have a portrait session with an iPhone and in the end I couldn't thank Samantha of North East Family Fun enough for letting me borrow her children.

The first and most noticeable difference and you might be able to see it on this photo above is the lack of depth of field, the iPhone 6 camera boasts an f2.2 lens but in reality if you were shooting with the same aperture lens on a professional camera you would notice depth of field straight away and without question.

To demonstrate, this below photo was shot with the Fuji X-Pro1 and the 35mm f1.4 lens at around f1.8

For the most part though the average parent probably won't care about that, they just want a pocket camera to capture the moments of their childrens lives and I'm very much the same, I always have my phone with me and I'm always snapping Instagrams through my day.

I'm going to compile some tips and tricks for parents over the next few days so you can make the most of your pocket camera or phone and I think we may even get together for an hour in the park, if you would be interested in a quick course of how to get more from your camera do let me know and we can get that set up.

I'm going to cover this more in future blog posts but I do love the selfie stick, not for selfies though, I just love it for being able to take the camera on your phone places where it previously couldn't go and places where it's significantly more difficult to get your professional camera (without extra equipment).

again, these 2 portraits I love albeit without the kind of depth of field I love but I'd print them, I'd have them on my walls or in a photo book.

Now then, something else I need to mention is the burst mode on the iPhone 6 camera, to take 10 frames per second with no real buffer is quite astonishing and the results are pretty good, well they are sometimes, again it's not going to equal what you can do with a professional camera but I love the movement in this one, it's one of those moments of childhood and this little one really was jumping up and down very quickly.  If I'd just captured this of my child when we were just out playing I would be delighted.

Again, all of these shots were iPhone in burst mode and I would be a happy parent to have captured these precious moments of childhood and you know, that is what it's about, I think as a photographer and a mum that you should have a portrait session every year, take the kids to places they love and have natural photos but as a parent you should be capturing those moments every day, not portraits, not smiley looking at the camera photos but the actual moments of their lives just doing things.

and so onto my beloved Xpro 1 and yes you can see the difference and I certainly don't intend to throw away my professional cameras...

The Xpro1 is capable of 6 frames a second and honestly that's quite enough for me and the average 3 year old, I also love the colours that my camera gives me, it's a beautiful wonderful thing I don't appreciate enough.

For the most part as a parent though I'll be so happy to carry around an iPhone 6 in my pocket for any moments that come up and I'll print them and I'll put them in frames mixed in with professional photographs, they all make up the rich canvas of life after all.

One thing I would say is that I hate editing photos on an iPhone, it's the screen which makes everything look better on an iPhone and then you see the images on a calibrated Mac and it's just yeuch.  I edited all of these images using Lightroom and Photoshop and I don't intend to stop that any time soon though I would say that the VSCO Cam app for iPhone/iPad is pretty good and I've also heard great things about Snapseed although I wasn't a huge fan, they tend to be the apps recommended by professional photographers though.

So go out there today into the spring sunshine and capture the moments of your childrens lives, it doesn't matter what kind of camera you have, just capture those precious moments because I can tell you as the mum of a pre-teen and 2 stroppy teens, they pass within the blink of an eye.