Last week, I discussed how to take your child’s photo with Christmas lights at night.  One of the perks to babysitting my nephews is always having a model for my photos, so this week I’ll show you how to take the same photo in the daytime.  As a side note, my nephews don’t always like being photographed:

There were two ways for me to capture these moments.  One was to use flash:

 which does allow the boys to be evenly lit, but it takes away from the Christmas lights on the tree.  Since I love the lights on the tree, I ditched the flash (then, again, I’ll ditch the flash in most situations if at all possible).  Given that it was pretty dark in their living room, the following shots were captured with the settings: ISO: 800; F/1.8; Shutter: 1/100th.  A few things to remember: a) The higher the ISO, the more “noise” is in the photo.  b) The smaller the f-stop, the less focus there will be in the photo (so only one of the boys will truly be in focus, but the lights should show up better).  c) the slower the shutter, the more movement will be in the photograph.

     One proud big brother sweetly patting his baby’s head.

JUST KIDDING!  It was really a knuckle-sandwich!  What are big brothers for, right?

    They really do love each other.  These two are such sweet boys!

In these images, all the windows in the room were open and the main light overhead was on.  If I could do this over, I would have changed the time of day I shot these so that more natural light would be available to come in through the windows (an East facing window allows the most light in in the morning, while a West facing window allows the most light in during the afternoon.  North facing windows are always winners!).  I also would have used a reflector (anything white: a large mailing envelope, a white shirt, a poster board) to bounce some of that light back onto the boys, since the windows are all behind them in these photos.

Which images do you prefer: the daytime photos where you can see my nephews’ faces or the nighttime photos where the children are being lit solely by Christmas lights?

– Mylah Renae

www.Eureka-Photography.com