I rarely get good photos of my son.  Everyone else’s son, yes.  Mine, no.  It is a classic case of PKS – Photographer’s Kid Syndrome.  But I have discovered the trick – get together with OTHER photographers and he will be a perfect angel.  Saturday morning I did just that and it allowed me to capture this lovely which I plan to print huge for my wall.

This photo also provides the perfect opportunity to give another photography tip.  While I will often tell people to get down on the subject’s level for good photos, at times this can prevent good light in the eyes.  If there is no good light in the eyes, especially in dark eyes like my son’s, the picture loses some “oomph” and can look flat.  You always want light in the subject’s eyes.  A great way to prevent this is to get the person to look up towards light.  What shows up are called “catchlights.”  Catchlights are good.  Catchlights are your friend.  And what’s extra cool about them is if you have a nice sharp photo with catchlights, you can see yourself in their eyes if you zoom in. In fact you can see the whole setting as I’ve shown in the second photo.  I’ll even throw in an extra tip – the ideal way to do this is to put your subject in nice even shade (like the shade of a building on a bright day) and have them look up towards the sky.

Cool, huh? 🙂