If you want to take some great family photographs this Christmas, why not try something a little different to the very standard ‘grinning-child-with-present’ shots that most people will capture with their ‘point-&-shoot’ cameras.

After all, how many times have we seen the harsh camera flash making people looked shocked and (let’s face it) quite unhealthy!

Here’s one idea for something a little more hand-made. The ‘recipe’ is below. :)

Recipe for the photo above…

Lighting:
- There’s no flash with this and it’s relying purely on the ambient in the room. This also means positioning them both where they’re not in the shade from the main light.
- The benefit of no flash is letting all the background light come through from the fire and Christmas tree to add to the scene.
- The ‘white balance’ setting on the camera allows a very warm kind of light to come through which matches the flavours of Christmas.

Composition:
- Obviously, the children are both positioned to allow the tree-lights and open-fire to set the background.
- A wide aperture (low ‘f’ number) was used to create that mushy out-of-focus background. This shallow ‘depth-of-field’ is important for the photograph but you don’t want it too out-of-focus back there or the colours merge into one and you’ll lose Christmas (shock!) :)
- To make the shot more interesting, they’re both looking straight to the camera with no smiles. This is a good way to encourage slightly older children into a photograph; you can tell them to look more like a rock-star and they’re more likely to buy into your ideas!

Why it’s different (summary):
1. No flash
2. Yummy out-of-focus background
3. ‘Cool’ expressions for kids

So this Christmas why not use some of that spare time to try some new styles of photographs. If nothing else, you’ll have lots of fun with it!

For more information on getting better photographs with your camera, visit www.bonjourphotography.com/training or email simon@bonjourphotography.com.

Some of you will know that I visited India recently and had an amazing opportunity to take photographs of some great people deep within the state of Rajasthan. I was taken off road by jeep to a remote ‘Bishnoi village’ where the families live in huts made from mud and cow dung(!) These vegetarians get their food off the land, they don’t cut any trees that are still alive, and they even check the wood they burn for insects to prevent unnecessary death.

While I was here they fed me a meal of bread and vegetables with some masala tea (which I’ve not managed to replicate back in England.) They were also happy to have their photographs taken without any hint of self-consciousness.

These people were very remote with no towns, shops or even people in the area for miles in any direction. They had no clean water, no gas, no electricity, and they’ve probably never heard of the internet. But they desired nothing more than the little they had. Quite humbling really.

Here’s a small selection from the Bishnoi Village.

Can you imagine being the parents of five (yes, five!) girls aged between seven and fifteen. Parenting them might be a small challenge (!) but photographing them in their amazing back garden was a walk in the park, almost literally!

I love photographing families in this environment. Capturing a combination of natural shots where the children are playing and then the eye-to-camera shots where they know they’re being photographed works really well.

Here, we also have a great combination of happy faces and beautiful lighting. What a perfect afternoon!

Maddie and Owen are gorgeous! They’re also really great fun so I was chuffed to bits when Zoe and Steve called and asked if I could take some photographs for the walls of their new house.

Sometimes I’ll use studio lights for these kinds of photographs but not this time. Each of these was shot using the natural light coming in the window of the spare bedroom at their house. This meant that Maddie and Owen were completely relaxed in their own surroundings so it was easy for them both to appear perfectly natural.

It was also funny to get some great expressions from Maddie in the last two photographs. She does her ‘cheeky little monkey’ look very well. I think she gets it from her mother… :-)