Picture Primer Photo Tips – Telling the Story

Originally published in the Voice of Pelham, May 8th, 2013

As a professional photographer, I design beautiful wedding albums for my brides and grooms that tell the story of their wedding day, so that when they look through it in 10, 15 or 20 years, they can fully relive their wedding day.

I capture overall photos of what’s happening, close-up beautiful moments that happen throughout the day, and all the details that are so carefully arranged.

The idea of using pictures to tell a story isn’t reserved for weddings, and it certainly isn’t limited to just professionals.

Here’s a tip to help you improve the storytelling in your pictures. For any function, event, trip or any other story you want to tell through pictures, always try and get three types of photos:

1. Scene-setting pictures – these will be an over-all view of what’s happening in the story, such as the outside of a house, a big group picture, or a wide angle perspective of a party.
2. Documentary photos – these are all those little moments, the cute smiles and the main part of the story of what’s happening. Who’s there? What are they doing? Capture that.
3. Detail photos – these are close-up photos of all the decor, the gifts, the signs, and so on. Anything that someone may have put time into arranging (i.e. balloons at a party or a centrepiece at a function) should be photographed.

When you focus on capturing each of these 3 types of photos, you will fully tell the story of what’s happening, who was there and what they were doing. When you look back at the photos from the event, function or trip, you’ll have a more complete story.

Until next time, happy shooting!

Picture Primer Photo Tips

Originally published in the Voice of Pelham, April 24th, 2013

We have so much amazing technology available to us in our digital lifestyle but there are still some parts that deserve to be brought “offline”, such as pictures. Think about it for a minute — how romantic is it to sit behind a computer screen with your fiancé and look at your engagement pictures? Or how nostalgic is it to sit on the couch with your kids and a laptop to flick through family pictures? Not very.

Many consumers today wait months before finally printing their pictures, and so when they do print them, the “magic” of the moment is gone. That’s why I recommend printing your pictures frequently and in smaller batches. Here are the 5 benefits of printing often:

1. The memories are fresh in your mind. Do you remember in the “film days” when you would come home from a vacation and rush out to the local photo lab to develop your film? You’d pay extra for the one-hour turnaround so that you could look at them once you got home even before you’d unpack. It was exciting and fun, and the memories were fresh in your head.
2. It’s obvious that printing more frequently is much less work than doing it in bulk a couple of times each year. You’re more likely to look to through the prints, put them on display and into albums if you have less to sift through. After all, no one wants to put a picture from Christmas up on the fridge in July!
3. You can share the prints right away while the memories are fresh. You don’t want to bring vacation pictures over to a friend’s house from six months ago. If you bring over the pictures the day you get back from your vacation, you have something visual to show while you tell all the fun stories from the trip.
4. There is less of a chance that the memory card will go corrupt or that you’ll loose the digital pictures if you print them more often.
5. One of our favorite things to do after the holidays, a trip or a get-together is to print duplicate copies of some of the pictures for friends and/or family who are in the pictures as well. We love to give them to them within 3-4 days so that they can enjoy the pictures while the memories are fresh in their minds.

As we go through our day-to-day lives, remember to take lots of pictures and print them often!

Here’s last week’s column, about taking better pictures inside with a window light.

I also blogged this tip on the Huffington Post here if you’re interested in reading another perspective. Enjoy!

I have recently partnered with the Voice of Pelham to write a weekly “Picture Primer” column for their readers, giving quick snippets of advice for the everyday photographer looking to improve their pictures.

Here’s my article in the Voice of Pelham on April 17th, and below you’ll find the full article. If you’re local to Pelham, keep an eye out in every Wednesday’s paper for my column, and if you’re not local, then you can visit the website to view the articles. I’ll also be blogging the articles here every week.

Enjoy!