Hello

Below I am sharing images from one of our Easter gatherings.  On my husband’s side there are 19 soon to be 20 grandchildren between his mom and her husband.  As you can imagine, that is quiet the crowd and loads of fun.  This weekend we had 1/2 the crew visiting and hunting down candy filled eggs.  After the hunt the boys thought running through the pine trees sans shirts was a great way to show off your fearlessness….. needless to say, we went through a lot of steroid cream that evening.

Anyway, some things to keep in mind when shooting group portraits that involve kiddos:

go with the flow–there is always something happening {like a certain 3 year old showing off his underwear}

isolate the little things–fingers opening candy, babies smiling and dirty toes from running without shoes

use manual settings on your camera if you can but using auto can save you when there is varying light and lots of motion–it’s ok to use auto

and lastly–posing perfectly is not necessary–the picture of all the boys is one of my favorites!  That picture came about during the run through the pine trees game.  I asked them to huddle together and smile quick for the camera–you can see that there are shoes missing, arms everywhere and one little guy looking to see what everyone else is doing–that’s the moment you want to remember.

I took 6 clicks and picked my favorite.  I shoot with a Nikon D800, Lens 50/1.8,  and because I had time to work in manual I used these settings ISO 640 {it was cloudy and dusk} 1/160  and f/2.8– I metered in camera.

 

 

 

 

My Sweet husband took the sister-in-law picture.

There were several giggling/blinking/I’m not ready/how does my hair look/I want to be in the middle/are my teeth doing that horse thing outtakes before we three photographers were happy!

 

by Ivy Towler