Series: Top 10 things that KILL Summer Photos #1

Your life and memories deserve to be amazing! This series focuses on the 10 biggest mistakes that kill your summer family photos and how you can fix them.

MISTAKE #1 - Using Only Your Smartphone Camera

Smartphones are indeed cool and convenient, but they have a ways to come yet.  Your family summer vacations are outside the normal routine and take you on many new adventures...meaning countless complex lighting situations phone cameras cannot deal with.  Have you ever tried to use your phone to make a photo in lava tube, attempted to capture the beautiful sunset at the beach resort, or got a blurry group shot around luau table after dark? Then you know what I 'm talking about and how your smartphone just couldn't keep up.  

Taken on an iPhone in a little morning shade. Not very good.

Let's take a closer look. Really bad.

iPhone trying to deal with low light in a tent.

SOLUTION:  At the risk of stating the obvious, use your real camera instead

Like you, I have been lulled into the iDevice age.  It takes considerable effort to remember the old digital-camera-thingy. Nearly all digital cameras are still better than nearly all smartphone cameras today, even the ones that boast 40 megapixels.  We can certainly argue that phone technology is getting better...but so are high definition displays. How will your phone images look on that 4K screen you have been eyeing?  Regardless which tech wins the race, I want to give my family memories the best possible chance which will never come from a built in camera smaller than a button.  In twenty years it will be irrelevant which device we made images on...no one remembers nor cares. In that day, the quality of the memory will be determined by whether or not the image even is worth viewing.

Taken on a 12 year old camera

Taken on a 12 year old camera

Taken on a 10 year old camera

Taken on a 12 year old camera

Taken on a 3 year old camera

Taken on a 3 year old camera

By the way, I am not saying to stop using your smart phone camera altogether. When it's all you've got, its all you've got. Just stop always relying on your smartphone as the "go-to device" while vacationing and making memories together. You will regret it.

Read about the other mistakes...

• MISTAKE #10 - Having everyone stand there and smile all the time

• MISTAKE #9 - Taking photos in direct sunlight

• MISTAKE #8 - Using those faux-filters in apps

• MISTAKE #7 - Leaving the camera in the hotel

• MISTAKE #6 - Disregard for your own children

• MISTAKE #5 - Never appearing in your own family photos

• MISTAKE #4 - Not getting close enough to the moment

• MISTAKE #3 - You didn't have a backup plan

• MISTAKE #2 - You didn't put much effort into it

• MISTAKE #1 - Using Only Your Smartphone Camera

-JMB

© 2015 Jared M. Burns Photography
Snohomish Family Photographer
www.jaredmburns.com | 206.659.7468 | info@jaredmburns.com

Series: Top 10 things that KILL Summer Photos - #9

Your life and memories deserve to be amazing! This series focuses on the 10 biggest mistakes that kill your summer family photos and how you can fix them.

MISTAKE #9 - Taking photos in direct sunlight

So often we vacation where it is sunny and beautiful. Sunlight creates bright highlights and deep shadows and our cameras don’t have ability to make sense of such dynamic range. Worst of all, people make squinchy-scrunchy faces. It’s not pretty.

SOLUTION:  Find shade

Areas of shade are the best photo opportunities on a bright sunny day.  Look under trees and beside buildings or structures.  If none can be found, you can always make shade...just have your subjects turn their back to the sun. Their front side will no longer be exposed to the direct sun giving their faces less intense and better balanced light of their own shade.

Shade of a building

Shade from bushes and trees

Shade created when the subject's back is to the sun

Read about the other mistakes...

• MISTAKE #10 - Having everyone stand there and smile all the time

• MISTAKE #9 - Taking photos in direct sunlight

• MISTAKE #8 - Using those faux-filters in apps

• MISTAKE #7 - Leaving the camera in the hotel

• MISTAKE #6 - Disregard for your own children

• MISTAKE #5 - Never appearing in your own family photos

• MISTAKE #4 - Not getting close enough to the moment

• MISTAKE #3 - You didn't have a backup plan

• MISTAKE #2 - You didn't put much effort into it

• MISTAKE #1 - Using Only Your Smartphone Camera

-JMB

© 2015 Jared M. Burns Photography
Seattle Wedding Photographer & Snohomish Wedding Photographer
www.jaredmburns.com | 206.659.7468 | info@jaredmburns.com

Series: Top 10 things that KILL Summer Photos - #10

Your life and memories deserve to be amazing! This series focuses on the 10 biggest mistakes that kill your summer family photos and how you can fix them.

MISTAKE #10: Having everyone stand there and smile all the time

Forced, fake smiles are awkward...you and I both know it.  Yes, it seemed like a good idea at the time, but when we look at the image later, we wish it had been more natural.

SOLUTION:  Think photojournalistic

Vacation is about life together so think like a photojournalist and document the real moments as they happen.  There are still times and a places for posed photos, but have fun with them.  Let people be themselves.  Catch a moment. Tell a joke and snap the photo when they laugh.  I have heard rumor of “certain noises” that can crack even the most stoic and uncooperative of children.

Keegan sits atop a sand dune - Bruneau Dunes State Park, ID

Ella hiking with her puppy at the Three Patriarchs, Zion National Park, UT

More sand than they know what to do with - Bruneau Dunes State Park, ID

Read about the other mistakes...

• MISTAKE #10 - Having everyone stand there and smile all the time

• MISTAKE #9 - Taking photos in direct sunlight

• MISTAKE #8 - Using those faux-filters in apps

• MISTAKE #7 - Leaving the camera in the hotel

• MISTAKE #6 - Disregard for your own children

• MISTAKE #5 - Never appearing in your own family photos

• MISTAKE #4 - Not getting close enough to the moment

• MISTAKE #3 - You didn't have a backup plan

• MISTAKE #2 - You didn't put much effort into it

• MISTAKE #1 - Using Only Your Smartphone Camera

-JMB

© 2015 Jared M. Burns Photography
Snohomish Family Portrait Photographer
www.jaredmburns.com | 206.659.7468 | info@jaredmburns.com