7 Tips for Real Pictures

of your Everyday Beautiful-Mess

Learn your camera.

It doesn’t matter if you’re using a cell phone, a point and shoot, or

a DSLR. Learn how to use it in modes other than Auto. Practice.

Practice. Practice.

Learning to use your camera properly helps you capture the images

just the way you want. You can blur the background or keep the

whole image in focus. You can capture movement without using on

camera flash. Most importantly, you begin to think about what you

want to capture before you click the shutter and that is when you

move from just capturing an image to creating intentional art.

If you need more help learning than just reading a camera manual,

jump into my Free Beginner Photography Class. Expecting to take

good pictures, but not being willing to learn your camera is like ex-

pecting to write your name without holding a pen!

Never Make your Kids say “Cheese.”

When you’re cap-

turing the every-

day, asking kids to

look at the camera

and smile often

produces photos

that look fake.

There’s nothing

cheesier than the

photo of your kid

with a fake smile

standing next to

the big city monument, or holding a bottle of glitter, or stopped in the

middle of the trail.

Instead,

capture

their real joy

as they in-

teract with

their world

uninter-

rupted. It’s

okay if they’

re so en-

grossed in

their craft

that they never look at you. Focus on their hands doing the work or

the work itself. It’s alright if the only picture you got of your child

with Mickey Mouse was the one with the red face and tears. It’s

even better if the only smile you can coax your 3 month old to give

the camera is the one where daddy is standing over her making a

goofy face.

My favorite snap of my daughters is this one as they spontaneously

held hands and walked to the beach. I really wanted them to face me

on this bridge but they wouldn’t cooperate for that. They were too

eager to adventure together onto the beach. And this was the story

of this entire mini-vacation: two little girls (and a little sand monster

boy) begging to go one more time down to the water.

Make

peace with

your desire

to photo-

graph per-

fection.

When we’re

chasing af-

ter toddlers

and chil-

dren, we’re likely to get just one or two photographs that are perfect

in each 50-200 images we take. But ‘perfect’ pictures don’t tell the

real or full story. Dare to tell the full story: your children will be glad

you captured these real moments.

Photograph the Simple Moments

You can’t capture the everyday beauti-

ful-mess if you only pull out your cam-

era at on vacation or on holidays.

Pull out your camera at bath time. Pull

it out when the kids are playing with

play dough. Pull it out when the baby

is crying and you’re at your wits end.

Snap photos of spaghetti night.

Snap self portraits as you and your

husband walk downtown after a date.

Grab that shot of your two year old

pulling boogers out of his nose. Bring

the camera when you’re taking an

evening walk and look for the beauty in

the season.

The series of images in this section were all taken when my girls

were 16 months old and were both having ear tubes placed. This

isn’t something typically photographed, but these captures bring

back every memory of this day for me: the tears and the relief. But

more than that, I can see each of my twins personality clearly dis-

played: Aeralind, timid and tearful. Bronwyn, fearless and expressive.

Don’t reserve the camera for special occasions. Photograph real

life!

Capture the Details

We’re often drawn to

take the big picture

images: the child

twirling in the yard, the

boat floating on a

harbor, and the whole

flower. However, of-

tentimes the everyday

stories can be told just

as well with an image

of a single detail.

After all, doesn’t memory work in detail? I bet if you share with me

the memory of your favorite day every thing you say will be a re-

corded memory of a detail. The look on your fiancé’s face when he

proposed. The smell of the kitchen on Thanksgiving. The first mo-

ment when you held your baby. These are all detail memories. Don’t

be afraid to record your memories in detail images.

The juxtaposition of pretty wild flowers and 4 hour old dirty break-

fast dishes tells the story of a mom too eager to keep having fun to

clean up the mess.

The dirt under a tod-

dler’s fingernails tells

an entire story of eve-

ryday conquest. A

close up of the biggest

sunflower the kids

grew. Chunky baby

thighs. The curls that

disappeared after the first

hair cut. Bare toes in the

grass tell of the onset of

warm weather. That little

hand clutching yours on a

walk tells the story of the

brief and trusting season of

childhood.

Get in close and capture

the little details that make

your day to day unique. Af-

ter all, life really is a group

of details strung together to

tell a story. Capture those

unique moments.

Before you Scream or Cry in a Crazy Moment:

Go get the Camera.

My twins were 16 months old and I had first trimester exhaustion. I

fell asleep for 30 minutes on the couch and woke up to both of them

playing happily in the fireplace. I just wanted to cry because I really

didn’t have the energy to give them a bath. Instead, I grabbed the

camera. This image always bring me back to that day emotionally,

but in retrospect it also makes me laugh at the sheer absurdity.

Obviously I

have many

such mo-

ments in

every day. I

have a

sneaky sus-

picion that

you do too.

There’s red

paint left

unattended and the joys of toddlers unrolling toilet paper. There’s

those ten seconds you and your friend turned away to talk while your

children tore into her pantry shelves. These are the real moments of

motherhood. Pure chaos erupting from the little people you love most

while they learn about their world.

Grab the camera when you want to scream in anger or cry over-

whelmed. Oftentimes, just having the camera in my hand gives me a

new perspective on just how funny motherhood is. Plus these real

and raw images really round out a photo album or scrapbook simply

because

they have

the best

stories at-

tached to

them.

Capture Different Perspectives

Most of the images of our children

that we take feature the same per-

spective. We’re standing over them

and looking down on them. We

may be really close to them and

looking almost directly down or we

might be across the room, but

we’re still standing at our full height.

A few great images need this van-

tage point, but most images of chil-

dren benefit from a change in per-

spective.

Let’s go over the perspectives we

can use.

Above

Shooting from high above a child

can make the child seem small. It

can also clear

away some of

the foreground

or background

clutter.

Shooting from

above can cap-

ture the details

of the child’s

surroundings that we wouldn’t be able to see if we were looking on

them directly. Think about how different an image of a child playing

with a train table would be if we took it standing on a chair or ladder

above them rather than standing across the room.

Shooting from above is also a great vantage point to capture your

child’s “Uh oh, momma caught me!” look. Or to make those “How did

you escape your clothes AGAIN?!” moments seem modest.

Eye level

Getting eye

level with

your child

completely

changes your

vantage point

from our

usual photo

taking per-

spective of

above our

children.

Eye level invites us into a child’s

world. We see what our children

see. We have to squat or sit or

crawl to see the world at this level

which is the primary reason this

perspective is rarely used in our

homes. I promise the discomfort is

worth the images that eye level

creates.

Eye Level perspective draws in

some details from the surroundings

but is still a great perspective to re-

duce some clutter.

Lower

Getting images from this perspective is physically difficult. We’ve

moved from squatting to army crawling in the front yard. We could also

position our children on a hill or a deck or in a tree above us. This per-

spective is unique and will make eye catching images.

Lower Perspectives make the child look larger than life. Children im-

mersed in their superhero worlds or walking about in mom’s high heels

benefit from having their photograph taken from this perspective. Jumps

into rain puddles would be epic in this perspective.

Framed or Hidden

Framed or Hidden perspectives require some creative thinking to

achieve but can really make excellent images.

A framed image has a physical frame around a subject. Photograph-

ing your child standing in the frame of your window creates a framed

perspective. Or through an arch of leaves. Or through the frame at the

top of the slide. Framed perspectives help keep our focus on our sub-

jects even when we have a lot of background clutter.

A hidden perspective is very similar to a framed perspective except

that the frame surrounding our subject is likely very close to our lens

rather than close to the subject. Hidden perspectives give us a sense

that we’re peaking into lives in a fun sort of sneaky way.

This is a shot of my little Aeralind where I used the crib rails to create a

hidden perspective. The rails are so close to the lens that they blur out,

but the sleeping child lets us know what they are. To create a hidden

perspective we shoot through things: crib rails or underneath a coffee

table or the branches of a tree to create a sense that we’ve eavesdrop-

ping on a child’s world. There’s lots of fun potential in this perspective

for shooting!

Print Your Memories

Before last year and my Home-Life Project 52, I was so guilty of

filling my hard drive

with images and

never printing them.

What’s the use of

diligently capturing

the everyday beau-

tiful-mess if we

don’t enjoy it? So I

committed to mak-

ing an album page

a week for the year

of 2012. I have two

beautiful photo

books from that

year that we treas-

ure and my children

often flip through

and ask for stories.

Writing this for you has reminded me how much I need to sit down an

work on this year’s album!

There are lots of options for enjoying your photos. You can do a

photo book like I did. Shutterfly and other services make this a super

easy drop and drag process. You can print images at 4x6 and slip

them in an old style photo album. You can scrapbook them if you

have the time and passion for it. You can print images and pick like

colored frames and create a gallery wall. Or you can enjoy a few

canvases in your living room. You can even make coasters, magnets,

mouse pads, or mugs or stickers as gifts.

But please don’t let your precious memories sit on a hard drive

waiting to be enjoyed. Enjoy them! Printed memories are a keepsake

that promotes family storytelling.

A Note From the Author

Hi, there! I’m Melissa Aldrich of Quiet Graces Photography based out

of Greenville, SC. I photograph Maternity, Birth, and Newborn Sessions

as well as two seasonal Lifestyle Family Mini-Sessions. But most of all

I’m a mommy to Aeralind, Bronwyn, and Sedryn. I chase them around

with a camera from sun up to sun down and sometimes when they’re

sleeping and I sneak a few moments to write about them and mother-

hood over on my blog. I hope you enjoyed some of my captures.

I’m so glad you’re walking this journey with me to take better photo-

graphs of your everyday mess. I’m passionate about capturing my chil-

dren’s childhood in a manner that expresses their real days. I know that

all too soon I will blink and they will all be in college. Seriously, how are

my daughters just 1 year and a

few months away from being a

half decade old?

My heart for you is to be in-

spired to use your camera

(whether it’s a DSLR or a point

and shoot or an iPhone) to cap-

ture the everyday beauty in your

days: both the moments that

make you want to cry and those

that make your soul sing. I hope

you display those memories in a

way that promotes the sharing of

stories.