Taking Great Photographs Of Your Baby

Babe photos are great, but sharing your pictures of your baby or grandchild is even better! Everyone loves a photo of a baby, and we all love sharing pictures of our families, so together they form a great combination; so get your camera's ready, check the batteries and start having fun!

Hear are some great ideas to help you take better pictures of your baby!

Be Prepared

We all know happens, your baby does something incredible, something you want to record for all time, but you never have a camera handy, and by the time you get one, the moment has passed, gone forever. The best thing to do to avoid this is to keep your camera handy.

Keep it close to where your baby is, on the mantle piece by the baby chair, in the front of the pram, even better; keep it in your baby-changing bag. Try to remember where you put it, and keep it handy. Even better, if you have a couple of cameras, spread them out around the house. Now you have your camera handy, keep it ready.

Make sure your batteries are charged, that the lens is clean, that you have plenty of space on your memory card, and that the camera is set up to take quick pictures

Candid Shots

It is often impossible to pose a baby, and even when you can, the resulting pictures usually look unnatural. A much better way is to take candid photos of your baby being itself, sleeping, yarning, crawling, laughing and smiling, and some of the best to take are eating, or more likely getting food everywhere other than their mouths!

These sort of pictures always look the best, the most natural, and often, years later, are the ones that best remind your of how your baby looked. One great thing about most modern cameras is the ability to zoom in from afar. This way, you can catch your baby off guard, or even take their picture without them knowing.

Try Black and White

For a change, why not play with those camera settings that the shop assistant was talking about, but that few people ever use? Many cameras these days can take black and white and sepia tone pictures.

Why not try taking a few? You will find that your baby looks slightly different, that light, tone and texture behaves a little differently, and all those funny coloured clothes start to blend together, and most importantly, older relatives will love the black and white pictures.

Just try showing them off, but don't be surprised if a box of old black and white photos from years ago gets taken out from the storage cupboard!

Take Lots of Photos

Anyone over a certain age will remember that photographic film is expensive, and that getting your photos developed at the shop cost even more. The tendency was to save your camera for special occasions or holidays, and even then to only take one or two pictures at a time.

All that has changed with digital cameras. Most cameras will hold 50 or so photos easily, and with an expansion card, that could rise to 500 or more. You will probably be able to view your pictures on the display at the back of your camera too, and delete any that don't work out. All this means that you can adopt a completely different mind set.

Take lots and lots of pictures! Don't take just one, leave your finger on the button and take many. This is especially true when taking pictures of babies and children. Their expressions and faces change so quickly, they might blink, or look away, or wave their hands in front of their faces, but if you keep snapping away BINGO you get the shot!

Don't worry about all the pictures you take, just delete the bad ones, or copy them to your PC and forget about them, just print the great shots out, and amaze your friends and family!

Share Your Photographs

This is probably the most important part, and definitely the best fun! Don't just leave those magic moments in your camera, or on your PC. Every few weeks, go through the hundreds of pictures you have taken, select the best 20 or 30 and either print them, or get them printed, and then share them!

Buy some small photo albums, get some great picture frames, even better, get some copies done of your pictures and give them as presents. We all have too much stuff these days, but we all have room in our homes and in our hearts for a cute baby picture!