EricHolsinger.com

“Say cheese!” isn’t just cliché, it’s often an annoucement of surrender from the camera-holder. The chance to capture a personal portrait has been squandered by asking everyone to act unnaturally and just smile (invariably while blinking).

When you have the camera in your hand, you should be looking for opportunities to capture some aspect of what you see. To really capture a person, try taking a photo without interrupting them. Try to capture a sense of what it is that makes that person interesting. Try getting a portrait of them doing what they do naturally. Just try to get a snap of them doing whatever they are doing.

If your kids are playing or some members of your family are having an interesting conversation, take the photo without interrupting them. Try to capture interaction. Take photos of hands. Take photos of what they see. You’ll get very interesting and intimate results. You’ll also have captured a moment in their life. Think of it as a kind of street photography.

Also, when your subject is absorbed in an activity, it’s a great opportunity to work on composition. You can move around, zoom and adjust settings and take photo after photo. Then, when everything looks just right, yell “Say cheese!”

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