I was on vacation in Panama City Beach, FL last week with my wife’s family. As mentioned in a previous entry, I tried to photograph the family in more of a documentary style than a usual vacation style. I was relatively successful (I think), but I spent more time shooting video with my little JVC Everio camera.
(A quick review of Panama City Beach. It used to be called the “Redneck Riviera”, and was tacky, gaudy, and cheesy. The Powers That Be have done an outstanding job of cleaning the place up – perhaps too outstanding. The tacky is mostly gone. There are very few seedy motels and almost no neon. It is becoming much more of a generic Florida beach town.)
Of course, while we were vacationing – having fun in the sun and sand – I noticed other people taking pictures of their families, and I had to cringe. I resisted the urge to get up and walk over to people to tell them what they were doing wrong and how to do it better.
I saw -
- People posing their families with faces directly to the sun, eyes squinting – even shielding their eyes with their hands.
- Folks shooting their families with their backs to the sun, but no hint of fill light (no reflector, no flash).
- Moms taking pictures of their toddlers’ first visits to the ocean – babies sitting at the water’s edge with moms standing up and shooting down at the kids.
- Folks with mid-range consumer dSLR cameras taking pictures of large scenes at night with the pop-up flash on the camera.
- Friends and families gathered around large tables in restaurants with someone taking a picture of the group from one end of the table.
I would like to address these common mistakes and offer corrective actions for them.
- A rule of thumb – don’t pose people facing directly into the sun. It is uncomfortable and unflattering. If you insist on doing that, wait until very late in the day when the sun has just about gone down.
- If you have your subject with her back to the sun, most point and shoot cameras or dSLRs set on an automatic setting are going to underexpose your subject. Use the manual override on your camera, or find the proper menu setting, to get some fill light from your flash.
- When taking pictures of your kids, get down to their level. Shoot from the child’s point of view. Don’t shoot down on them.
- The flash built into your camera – whether a pop-up on your Nikon or Canon dSLR or the automatic on your point and shoot – will not illuminate a landscape. You will over-light the foreground and the background will go dark if you use everything on automatic.
- The above applies to taking pictures of groups of people, too. Don’t try shoot end to end. Shoot from the side, and stand back. Your flash will light more evenly and not make the folks in the background fade to black.
On another note, we HAVE to get away from the family beach photos of everyone dressed in khaki pants and white shirts posing on the sand dunes and sea oats. I know it is pretty, and “classic” looking, but it has become trite and cliched. I can’t count how many family groups did this exact same set up while we were on vacation. It has become an expected photograph, and, in my not so humble opinion, it must stop. Yes, we are as guilty of it as everyone else. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a cliche.
All that said, it was a fun vacation. I enjoyed spending time with the family, and really didn’t stress out about Other People’s Photography Habits as it appears.
