Montclair Magazine May 2017 | Page 20

List Point, Click and Keep Your kids have agreed to stop having fun long enough for you to take their picture. So you whip out your phone and… Why is the sun so blinding? Are you too close? And what’s with the faces? Point-and-click cameras have made it easier than ever to take spontaneous images. To make the most of all the photo opps, we asked local portrait photographer and studio owner MICHAEL STAHL for some tricks of the trade. Seven strategies for grabbing good snapshots 5 | CHASE CLOUDS… 1 | SHOOT FOR IMPACT If you’re shooting outside, the bright sun is not your friend. Clouds make the light more diffuse and less harsh. There’s an old phrase in photography: “If your photos aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.” Move up enough to fill the frame. 2 | THE RIGHT HEIGHT When you’re photographing kids, don’t point the camera down and take the picture from above. You’ll get more dramatic, impactful photos if you take them from the same level. 3 | A BIT OFF-CENTER 18 MAY 2017 MONTCLAIR MAGAZINE 6 | …OR FIND THE SHADE 4 | FILTERS APP-LY There are apps that help from an editing standpoint. I use one called Snapseed that adds detail and changes lighting on my iPhone shots. If you have a great image, but it’s too dark or bright, you can overlay artistic interpretations. On really sunny days, you’ll get best results posing your photo subjects against a tree trunk, wall or other shady place. Ideally, you want the sun at a 45-degree angle, streaming across the subjects to light their faces. 7 | AVOID THE “S” WORD We never say “Smile!” in our studio. Instead, we try to be funny so people smile without thinking about it. In the art world, there’s a thing called the “rule of thirds.” You divide the frame into thirds across and up and down, and the intersections of the lines are the points where it’s most interesting. The editing grid on your iPhone allows you to move your image around this way; you can crop to put the point of interest, not in the dead center, but in a more unexpected place.