Farnham Family Photography Tips

Farnham Family Photography Tips { 12 Images of Christmas – Day 6 }

The joys of snap shot photography

Today I am posting some of my Farnham family photography tips on the joys of snap shots. I took these snap shots outside our home last year when our boys decided to have a bit of fun with the Christmas wreath that featured in my 2015 Christmas card session, which you can see here.

This was a playful moment when Christmas was over, the tree was stripped bare and dejected into the back garden and we were getting ready for the start of another school term.

All the decorations were packed away and the wreath was the last thing to be removed from our front door. This was definitely one of those moments when I quickly picked up my iphone.

These are just snap shots but looking back one year on they have become a precious set of images marking the last Christmas spent at this house before we moved to Farnham and of course the boys are both looking that bit older one year on.

Your snap shots are as valuable as professional family photographs

 Your snap shots are as valuable as professional family photographs because they work together in harmony to tell your families story.

As a Mum and a professional family photographer I value our “…quick snap that on the phone…” moments, as much as I value our organised special day out with the Nikon camera in hand and the aim of capturing some carefully produced family portraits.

We want both threads for our family story.

This summer we hired a professional photographer to take photographs of us with our children. We noticed that pictures of the kids in our family albums were starting to outweigh pictures of us all together.

We also wanted to enjoy the service of having another professional photographer (other than us!) look after us for a morning and have our family time viewed from the perspective of another photographer.

We wanted someone else to edit them for us. We also wanted that photographer to produce a beautiful album so we could keep it on a bookshelf at home where anyone could pick it up and enjoy the pictures any time they wanted to.

This year we have also generated another collection of snap shots from our day trips, holidays, barbeques, bath time, learning to ride a bike, eating dinner, eating breakfast, not eating breakfast, crazy blurred moments I snapped so quickly so as not to miss the funniest moments of any given day and, so it goes on.

We have produced another collection of beautiful, fun, hectic, sweet and whimsical moments of our every day lives. They are all uploaded and date catalogued on an external hard drive and (fingers crossed) mostly backed up on another hard drive. …we think….yes we are sure!?!

We really enjoy all of our snap shots very much. We also enjoy the snap shots that my friends and family share with us on Facebook, Instagram and other social media platforms. We share ours with friends and family in this way too. It helps us to feel more connected. Even though we may not get to see each other everyday, we get to feel a bit more connected with the everyday moments in each other’s lives.

It’s easy to suffer from image overload.

Our generation takes more digital images than our parents ever took on their analogue/film cameras. There are various statistics thrown around on the internet and the most interesting one claims that in the last 10 years we have taken as many pictures as in the entire history of photography as a medium.

That’s a lot of photographs that end up sitting on hard drives and home computers. So much so, that many parents say to me that they do not know what to do with their vast quantities of pictures or how to even find the time to look back through that many images.

Overall, we take a lot of images and the vast majority can easily get lost or forgotten about. Without meaning to be careless there are periods where I get into a very casual mindset about my digital snapshots. They get scattered all over the place as they are taken on different devises and often quickly uploaded to different computers.

It is easy to suffer from image overload, and this is a feeling that many parents express to me. I know it all too well because professional photographers feel this too.

Do you have a long term purpose or intention for all of your snap shots?

I find my snap shots can also become more about every day communication on social media platforms or in text messages to my husband, rather than producing photographs for their future prosperity.

When my Mum put a roll of film in the back of her Pentax Automatic in the 80’s, she was thinking about recording a few special moments on an eventful day, such as a birthday, Christmas, first bath, first steps, ballet exam, family holiday or special outing. …and she was always careful not to use the whole roll of film! Most of these photographs were posed and then there would be a few where she had pulled back to include a bit more of the action from the day.

I will photograph what the kids wore to school on Christmas jumper day and text the image to my husband because he left for work early in the morning and missed seeing the kids dressed up. I photograph the kids craft activity at the kitchen table to let my friends on Facebook know what a great Mum I am being over the half term break. I will even text my husband a picture of the latest meal my son didn’t eat!

These are valid reasons to take photographs however I have to admit I can sometimes (not all the time, but sometimes) forget the long term purpose and intentions for taking many of our family snap shots.

I can sometimes forget how much their value multiplies in years to come because I am often only thinking about the use and purpose in that particular moment.

The value of our snap shots increase incrementally over time.

When I look back through my hard drive some months and years later I see the picture of my boys in their Christmas jumpers and notice just how much they have grown. I see how much my eldest son’s hair colour is slowly changing from ash blond to light brown. I remember the moments that came before and after this image was taken. The value of this and many more of our haphazard snap shot images increase with every day and year that passes.

It seems like such as obvious point to make but I find that by looking back at these snap shots and taking the time to archive them has encouraged me to think a little more about how, why and what I snap with my iphone!

I have also given myself some advice that helps me to feel ok about the vast numbers of snap shots we continue to generate as a family.

How to harness your Families snap shot photography

• Be somewhat discerning about which images you keep and save. Most family snap shots are either emotionally driven and/or they record a key moment in family life such as a birthday, first steps, riding a bike. Keep the key moments and all the images that make you smile. Discard the rest!

• Because they are snap shots they don’t need to be perfectly executed images to make you smile. Let yourself keep the images that make your heart melt regardless of their quality.

• Take care to save your iphone, tablet and digital camera images effectively. Snap shot images are so much about existing in the moment. But, if you want to also enjoy them in years to come make a regular time/day each week or month to upload your digital images from your phone and any other devices you are using, keep them all in one place and back up your digital images regularly and update the devices they are saved on.

• On a regular basis, whether it’s once a year or once a month make it a habit to identify your most treasured snap shots over that time period and print them! You can spend a little or a lot but if you want value for money choose a printer who can print using archival inks and papers to ensure your treasured images last for as long as possible.

• Snap shots are a valuable part of family life and your family story but from time to time balance these out with a professional photography session. Enjoy the service of being looked after by a professional photographer, having someone take flattering and heartfelt photographs of you all together and being able to produce archival prints, wall art or albums so everyone can see these images all of the time.

So looking back again at the pictures of my boys playing with the Christmas wreath. ….

• When I picked up my iphone I recognized this as a special bonding moment with the kids and wanted to treasure these photographs as they marked the last Christmas in our home before we moved to Farnham and there smiles here are just great!

• Once these snaps were uploaded on my computer I separated out our favourites into a separate folder and backed them up on another hard drive and I have also placed them in ‘the cloud’.  I have taken 23 images in total and I managed to narrow it down to 7!

• I included some of the outtakes within the 7 chosen images because it tells a broader story of the day. I had dragged them off a warm cosy couch to ‘enjoy some fresh air’ and ‘help Mummy’.  There are a couple of snaps where they are outside the door looking very unimpressed with me or Tristan is trying out his Spiderman actions, such as this image here.

If you have enjoyed my Farnham family photography tips but have found, like we did, that you are not getting enough photographs of you all together as a family then how about you try a family session with me in the new year?  I normally book up about three months in advance so now is the best time to book for a spring family session.

Get in touch with me using the contacts page which you can find at the top of my website. Alternatively you can phone me on 07903772960.