[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Are you’re sick of looking back at your holiday snaps and seeing smiling faces standing in front of landmarks? Sick of seeing flagpoles sticking out of heads and rubbish bins in the photo background after you took the snap?
You don’t need a good camera to take a fantastic photo of your kids on holidays.
Louise Glendon and her family on holiday. Picture: Click Love Grow
A good camera does help. But it’s how you use the camera that matters more.
You can dramatically improve the quality of your photos by following a few simple rules.
Louise Glendon is the owner and chief photographer at Click Love Grow. A former intel-officer in the Australian defence force, Louise had always loved photography. When her husband, also a defence force officer, was posted to the US, Louise took some time off with her two children and explored her passion.
She found many photography courses were too technical and gave too much information at once. After practicing and honing her craft her own way, Louise decided to write a photography course that made sense to amateurs. It would take them through the basics one step at a time, with practice built in daily.
Click Love Grow expert Louise Glendon can teach you to take photos like this one. Picture: Click Love Grow
“My philosophy around Click Love Grow is just explaining things easily, using really clear examples, and following, a step-by-step so, Mums can just enjoy their cameras and take the photos of the kids that they love, even if they don’t want to onto become photographers,” Louise says.
Louise started a online blog in 2013. Within months of launching, she had sold 130 courses. This year, Louise is expecting to sell 1500 courses from beginners all the way to advanced. She has a huge fan base both in Australia and all around the world.
“Yeah, it really took off,” she says. “I think that whole messaging really appealed- it being accessible and easy and it was for mums.”
Zoom in and fill the screen with the details and you will get a fantastic photo. Picture: Click Love Grow.
Click Love Grow offers a free one week course that anyone can take. It demystifies photography and breaks the craft up into bite-sized lessons. It can even be done with a smart-phone camera.
“We give you very specific prompts like, “Go and try this. Go pick up your camera and do this with props’ and I find that’s really helpful because people can see the results that they get straight away.”
So what actually makes a great photo? What are some of the things that you should consider?
The first is time of day.
“If possible, when you’re out and about traveling, try and get up really early and go visit places, either alone, if you can sneak out without your kids or make the commitment to get up early because often places have a lot less people there, early in the morning,” Louise says.
“You can capture beautiful morning sky, the colour and the light falls on places in a really pretty, flattering way – that’s when you get those stunning shots.”
Get up early in the morning to get stunning shots. Picture: Click Love Grow
Louise says families should think about telling a story with their photos. Instead of standing in front of famous landmarks, she suggests capturing a wide shot to get context to where you are.
“Then you might come in closer and get, like, some action shots of things that your kids are doing, then go in really close to the detail shots of their expressions or things they might be holding or the details of where you are, the colors and the textures, and kind of fill the frame of that, you can get some really stunning photos,” Louise says.
Lousie’s photo of her children surfing in Hawaii perfectly captures the moment. Picture: Click Love Grow
That series of photos – the wide, the action and the detail can be put together beautifully in a photobook or an album.
“Then you’ve got beautiful storytelling threads that tell you so much more about where you were and the detail where you think about the tastes and the smells, you can’t recreate those, but you can get up really close and get the details of those things, which is always really fun.”
Always look for lines when you are taking photos. And make sure they are straight.
“If you ever look at a photo and the horizon is crooked, it’s almost like the people are falling out of the photo or the buildings are falling,” Louise says. Keep your horizons straight and your up and down buildings straight, it has a lot more impact.”
To help ensure lines are straight you can turn on the grid lines on your camera or phone. Match the horizon to the third lines and you will notice an instant improvement in the composition of your photos.
Make sure your subjects don’t have anything sticking out of their head. Picture: Click Love Grow
Clutter is often what ruins photos – too much stuff in the background or edges. Before you take a photo, Louise suggests taking a few moments to scan around.
“Is there a giant pole or trees coming out of people’s heads? It may just mean that you shuffle the people slightly or you change your angle a little bit,” Louise says.
Instead of always standing straight in front of your family as you take a photo – try changing the angle for your holiday snaps.
“That’s one thing that’s really great to do, particularly if you’re visiting big, impressive landmarks like the Eiffel tower – if you get down low and shoot up, you can often have a lot more of the sky behind your subject and it can eliminate some of that clutter that you would normally have if you were standing at eye-height.”
Louise’s last tip is to slow down and look at things you may normally miss. Take your camera with you on a normal day and capture what happens.
“We always tend to pick up the camera for the big events, like the graduations or the big fancy holidays, but we have all these tiny moments of joy in our every day that if we didn’t take photos of it, the little details, then we wouldn’t have the memories of it.”.
A little boy rides a tricycle along a path in the park. Picture: Click Love Grow
Once you have mastered those simple steps to better photos you can move on to taking your camera off manual mode.
Click Love Grow’s tips for great photos:
Clear the clutter
Tell a story with photos capturing wide, action and detail
Try different angels
Keep your lines straight
Don’t forget to jump in the photos yourself
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Travel allows you to get outside your bubble. It makes you realise there are other ways to do things, and that’s OK. Plus, I am a huge fan of skiing and for the best powder – you need to head overseas.