Although we notice the difference in their children each year, it was only when looking at this video that we realised how much they have grown.

Computers now make it very easy to store and display your photos. I have all of my family photos in a folder that is set as my screensaver. This way recent and old photos often come up next to each other – great for showing the passing of time.

Poppy is sitting on the bed with a lovely expression, looking really happy and Ainsley has caught the moment beautifully. I love pictures that are casual and show the family home. The importance of this to the children when they look back as adults can’t be overestimated. These pictures help them to understand their upbringing, place them in their family history and sometimes even become their memories of childhood.

Poppy

So, the moment Ainsley has been waiting for – let’s get hyper-critical!

The lamp and the bedside drawers do make it slightly imbalanced as a composition and take a little bit of attention away from Poppy but they also help to give a sense of place to the shot, so not really a great problem. Poppy’s right hand is blurred but again I think that helps convey a sense of motion and excitement. Poppy is a bit dark in the photo and this could have been helped by placing her slightly back on the bed so that the light from the window on the right would have been shining a bit more on to her full face. This can be helped by brightening the picture a bit, a control that is in all photo editing programmes. None of these problems spoil this photo and are all easy to correct with minor adjustments.

This phototograph could also have been done in a ‘portrait’ format by just swivelling the camera. Most of the pics that I am shown by parents are horizontal or what photographers and painters call ‘landscape’ shaped (‘portrait’ being used for upright or vertical shots). The reason the term portrait is used for uprights is that most people are taller than they are wide and so can fill the frame better in this format. Try taking only portrait shaped photographs for a whole day and this will help train you to see things from a different angle.

Here is the pic of Poppy cropped as a portrait shot. This concentrates the viewer more on her while still showing enough to see the bedroom setting. Neither pic is right or wrong, just different ways of seeing.

Poppy 'portrait' framed

Thanks for sending in this lovely photo Ainsley, I hope you find this advice useful and keep up the good work.

If you have a photo you would like to send in to Ken’s Tips On Your Pics please email it to me: ken@kensharp.com. Feel free to leave a comment and to keep up with Ken’s Tips, competitions and general news, please join me on my Facebook Page.

The moon over the Shieling by the Bay

The Shieling by the Bay has its own private bay where we saw seals playing early one morning. There are supposed to be otters there too but they obviously didn’t like the cut of our jib. The Shieling also has its own little hill with a picnic table at the top where you can look out over the lochs and bay.

In the picture you can see Lesley sitting at the top of the hill. We got up at 6.00am to watch the sunrise and were lucky enough to see the moon still lit up in the sky. Even at my age I am still surprised and delighted to see the moon and sun at the same time.

The beach at Sollas was truly wonderful, stretching for miles and almost completely deserted. We did pass another couple walking along it, who obviously have no respect for other people’s privacy. At least when we walked back we had the place to ourselves.

Lesley as we descend onto Sollas beach

Sollas beach

Sollas beach

Sollas beach

Sollas beach

Max by Katie

Personally it doesn’t bother me that much, I think that it is a charming photo, well composed and the background gives a real sense of place. However I agree that there is a lot going on so I will try a couple of things to see if we can get Max to stand out a little more.

The first thing I would do is to get rid of the distracting colours by changing the photo to b&w. The picture immediately looks ‘quieter’ but there are a couple of other things that I can do to make Max stand out.

Using Lightroom I have darkened the whole photo by dropping down the exposure and then used the Brush tool to lighten, sharpen and add contrast to only Max. To bring in the focus even more on Max I have darkened the edges of the photo using the vignetting slider.

All of these tools have to be used carefully so that the effect doesn’t become too obvious and so make the picture look unnatural.

Max in black and white

A simpler way to focus in on max and lose any distractions would be to crop the pic.  I have shown two possible crops, one tight and one square. Cropping a photo often changes the story it tells. In this case the pictures are now all about Max’s expression and we lose the nice homely feel of the original.

A tight crop

A square crop

Thank you Katie, for sending in the pic and I hope that it helps. I always like to see young people enjoying photography. Keep it up, it looks like you have a good eye.

If anyone has any ideas or comments that they would like to make then please do. Or if you would like any advice on a family photograph that you have taken, please post it on my Facebook Page or email it to me at: ken@kensharp.com.

At first I wondered why these pictures had such an emotional pull, after all the photos are just pics of old snapshots showing slightly more background than the original. Would this work as well if we just saw the old photo, comment and the date it was taken?

The beauty of the Dear Photograph idea is seeing the thumb that holds the old picture as well as showing the background that hasn’t changed. This immediately creates a physical link to the subject in the snap with the person taking the photo now, spanning the years between shots, the past as part of the now.

I sometimes tell my clients that their photos will become more precious with age and that the photographs are as much for the children as they are for them. When I hear myself saying it I imagine them thinking that it is a sales pitch but I really believe it. I like to imagine that in sixty years time the subject of the photo will be saying to their grandchildren “That was taken when I was your age”.

There are many reasons I photograph people in their homes but the main one is to give a sense of time and place. When the family has moved on many years later and the children have grown, I want the photos to remind them of that time in their lives and also to show the grown up children where they came from.

Recently I did a post showing Isabella, sitting in exactly the same place after seven years had passed. This was one of my most popular posts and I had requests to do more but just haven’t got around to it. Dear Photographer has reminded me of the power of photography to show the passing of time and I will now get on and continue with the series of clients through the years.

This is Joe who I photographed for the second time a few weeks ago. He has grown a lot since the first session in 2003.

Joe 2003

Joe 2011

Zoe - the June winner.

Ten minutes after and there are still votes coming in for both of them (Coco 90, Zoe 89) but it had to come to an end and 9.00pm was the allotted time.

Congratulations Zoe and because it was so close I am going to award Coco a runner-up prize of a sitting and a small print. The randomly selected voters prize of a sitting and a free medium print goes to Richard Fraser. If you would like to get in touch Richard we will send you your voucher.

Coco - a very close runner-up.

Thanks to all the parents for letting me use their photos and to all the voters .

There will be more Facebook competitions coming soon as well as tips on how to photograph your children and special offers. If you have a photograph and would like constructive advice on how to improve it, then please send it in for it to be included in Ken’s Tips On Your Pics.

(Still coming in at 9.30. Coco 90, Zoe 92. You can got to bed now:-)

We always really enjoying seeing how much the the kids have changed and this year we met some new friends. Next year we are planning a different trip and will hopefully be travelling to the Napa Valley, Santa Monica and spending a week in North Carolina.

Isabella

Drake

Spencer

Sydney

John

Amanda

Natalia

CJ

Liliana

Blakely

Michael & Mum

Dylan

Analisa

Alec

Casey

James

Ryan

Alexandra

Sabrina

Isabella

The twins

I will look at the small technical errors that detract from it having greater impact. The first thing that strikes me is that the colour balance of the pic is off. The skin tones are extremely warm. Normally this would be due to the use of tungsten light, which is a much warmer light than daylight or flash (usually balanced to approximate daylight).

In this case I think that the warmth comes from the fact that this image has been under-exposed and with digital this usually means an increase in redness. I balanced the colours to create a more natural skin tone but in the end decided that this is a prime candidate for going to b&w.

The composition looks a bit empty at the top, cramped and busy at the bottom. There is also a small bit of wall showing behind the backdrop that doesn’t add to the picture. To get rid of these distracting elements I have done a square crop and filled in that bit of wall.

B&W and a tighter crop

I have cropped the boys just below their elbows as I wanted to keep a bit of the curve of their stomaches, a feature so indicative of children their age. Using a square crop also means that I now don’t have a lot of empty space above the boys’ heads.

Finally I have cleaned up the image by removing a few spots and brightening it slightly.

Whether these changes are an improvement comes down to taste but hopefully I have shown that a bit of post-processing can make quite a difference to your image. This took me about two minutes to do and once you have practised on a few images you will find that making the decisions necessary and carrying out the changes will become second nature, hopefully resulting in more ‘finished’ photographs.

Thank you Michelle, for sending in the pic and allowing me to comment on it.

If anyone has any ideas or comments that they would like to make then please do. Or if you would like any advice on a family photograph that you have taken, please post it on my Facebook Page or email it to me at: ken@kensharp.com.

Isabella 2004

Photography is a wonderful and sometimes frightening indicator of the passage of time. This year I took a photograph of one of my regular client’s daughters with the same backdrop that I had used seven years ago. The original photograph will be familiar to anyone who has seen my web-site or promotional material in the last few years as it is one of my favourite photos and has been well used.

Isabella 2011

I photograph Isabella every year and this time thought it would be nice to sit her in the same spot as the seven year old original. It was only when looking at the downloaded images that I realised, with quite a shock, how much she had grown.

Christina is a very accomplished photographer, especially as she has only been doing it seriously for the last two years. As well as photographing clients she takes a lot of pics of her daughter Fiona.

This pic shows Fiona lying on her cousin’s sofa. There are a couple of objects on a shelf at the back.  Everything is well composed and Christina was very pleased with the beautiful bokeh (the way the lens has rendered the flowers out of focus) and the matching colours of the background. It is a very good photograph of a lovely little girl.

Fiona

My only concern with the photo is the way my eye moves continuously from Fiona’s face to the flowers, never resting on one area. It isn’t always a bad thing to have some movement in an image but here I find that visually, the flowers demand as much attention as the main subject. The fact that they are framed by the wall and the door, draws the eye to them, away from Fiona who should be the main focus of the photograph.

I have Photoshopped the flowers out, and although the background now looks rather empty in comparison, it shows the difference it makes to where you look in the picture. It really is a matter of taste which one you prefer, neither are right or wrong, but you should always try to be aware of what is in the background of your photo and also what you are trying to say.

Without the flowers

Thank you Christina for letting me use the photo of Fiona. I look forward to seeing how your photography progresses.

If anyone has any ideas or comments that they would like to make then please do. Or if you would like any advice on a family photograph that you have taken, please post it on my Facebook Page or email it to me at: ken@kensharp.com.