Holidays are often a time for family get-togethers and Thanksgiving is just three weeks away. We have a rather large, extended family and for us Thanksgiving has always been an important one.

With family members arriving from homes in diverse cities, coordinating this festive dinner is a major task. Thankfully in recent years, we’ve handed the title of event coordinator over to one of our kids – the next generation. This helps to relieve lots of stress and pressure on my wife Kris, who is usually the host for the turkey dinner with all the fixin’s, a wide variety of beverages and lots of calorie-laden deserts.

Here’s a photo tip. I suggest that before sitting down for dinner, you set aside a few minutes for holiday portraits. With Christmas close behind, Thanksgiving is a great opportunity to snap photos to use for Christmas cards or gifts.

A camera, a small flash and a comfortable chair tucked into a small corner of a room can serve as your holiday studio. Have a hair brush and a mirror at hand. Keep the background simple and move in close.

You still have time to get your Christmas cards ready. And by all means enjoy the turkey.

 

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Taking pictures of kids is one of the most popular uses for digital cameras. This is another article that we present to you for taking better kids pictures.
 

To Pose or not to Pose – the case for Candids When you ask a child to pose, you may get varying reactions, looks and faces. If your subject is cooperative you’ll probably end up with a nice portrait. But sometimes, catching your little one candidly – in a “surprise moment” – can often produce a more pleasing photo.
For this shot, we asked the young boy to smile for the camera. He cooperated with this open mouthed smile, but his pose otherwise seems kind of static.	Later in the day, we found him playing near the pool. Instead of posing him, we called out his name, he turned and we captured him looking more natural.
For this photo, the young lady was quite aware that we were taking her picture. We captured her with a nice smile	Using a telephoto lens, we waited patiently. She was unaware that we took this candid shot with a more relaxed look.
Here again we asked the young girl to stop what she was doing to take this shot. She cooperated by giving us a generous smile.	In this photo, you can see that we were able to capture her inner smile. We didn’t ask for one yet her running activity produced a great one.

 
Of course these tips are subjective and there is no right nor wrong way – especially if the subject is your own child! Candids are just another tool to add to your gadget bag.
 
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Continuous Shooting

Most digital SLR and many point-and-shoots have a feature called continuous shooting that lets you capture several photos in a very short period of time. This is also referred to burst mode. So at the soccer game, by keeping the shutter depressed you can capture your star player as she runs towards the action, swivels her leg into launch position behind her, quickly drives her kicking shoe forward and finally strikes the ball.

On a recent outing, I caught one of our future diving stars practicing at the pool. With the camera set to take continuous photos, I quickly fired off nine shots as she made her big leap into the water.

Pressing the shutter was the easy part.

After reviewing the photos, I wanted to be able to show the young girl’s diving exploits to others. One method is to make a composite of the action. Here’s a miniature composite:

Making a larger composite makes it easier to see the detail of each frame. However, the time and expense may cause you search for an alternative if you’re planning to make many such composites.

Another way to show these is to convert the nine individual frames into a movie. One free and easy way to do this is to use Picasa 3*. After starting Picasa, I added the nine photos to my library. Next I highlighted these nine frames and clicked on the Movie icon (towards the bottom of the screen).

For Transition Style, I chose Disolve. For Slide Duration, I chose 1.0 second. You can choose a longer time which lets you study each frame more, but I prefer the shorter duration which makes the action seem to flow more naturally. For Overlap, I chose 100%. For the diving action, this setting seems to provide the best effect. Then I click on the Create Movie button. This converts the 9 individual frames into a short movie.

In just a few seconds, Picasa turns the images into a short movie with which you can enjoy the action with others. Click here to see the movie.

Yes, you can have a fun using the camera’s continuous shooting mode. But sharing the action with the world makes the fun last much longer.

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* Picasa is available for the PC and Mac by free download from Google.

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