capturing some fun moments


Before I was a professional (and I still feel funny calling myself a professional photographer, still waiting on imposter syndrome to die down), I was a mom who wanted cute pictures of my kids. ALL. THE. PICTURES for all the cute moments. I am obsessed with documenting all the moments - big and small. And while I would love for my clients and people who follow my journey to hire me to take ALL their pictures, that's just not possible. So I thought it would be kinda cool to show you how to take fun pictures on your own. This post is all about how YOU can set up your own session and capture some summer time fun moments of your own crew.

Pick your theme - 4th of july

Gather your props


Sometimes I go all out and spend lots of time and $$ on setting up the perfect session. This time, I decided that I could ONLY use stuff I had at home already.

  • American Flag
  • Sparklers (more on this below)
  • Red, White, & Blue wardrobe that my kids already had
  • Max's "Tony Stark" Sunglasses

Some wishlist items I thought of adding would have been:

  • Bomb Pops
  • Pop Rocks
  • Coca Cola (in the glass bottles)
  • Misc. Patriotic Swag from the Party Store


Before we get started, safety first!

  1. Always, always closely supervise kids with sparklers. It is so important that you walk kids through the ground rules of sparkler safely before you get started.  It is also important to be mindful of the ages of the children you are shooting and only give sparklers to children who are mature enough to handle them safely. When capturing moments with sparklers, it’s always a good idea to have someone who watches the kids while you are shooting.  It is so easy to get caught up in capturing the moment that you struggle to make safety a priority.  It only takes a split second for playing with sparklers to turn from a fun activity to a tearful and painful one! 
  2. Use the long sparklers! Longer sparklers create more distance from the sparks and the person holding the sparkler to lessen the chance of getting hit by the sparks.  Also, selfishly they give you more time to shoot between having to re-light the next one.  If you are shooting more than one person at a time be sure they know to keep a safe distance from one another! 
  3. Have a bucket of water nearby.  This can serve as dual purpose.  Having a bucket can be used as a safe place to put the hot sparklers after they are done burning.  Nothing is worse than a little hand grabbing a used sparkler before it has cooled.  Also, if by the rare chance a spark catches something on fire you have water handy to put it out quickly.


When and where to shoot


Location for the session and the time of day you choose will make all the difference. For this session, we went with Hidden Cove Marina in Frisco, TX. Truthfully, our backyard would have been just fine so don't let this detour you if you need convenience. But if you're able to venture out, I say go for it. I look at it as an opportunity to get out and have a bit of an adventure.

As far as timing goes - you will never beat golden hour, the hour before sunset. This time of day is always ideal. And since the goal of our session was capturing some fun with sparklers, this time of day was mandatory.

Waiting for sparkler time

the warm up


We had some time to kill before dusk since we got to our location early. So we used the time to take some images with our American flag. There was no prompting here. I just wanted the kids to have fun and not feel like they we're at a session. Sure, I asked for some smiles here and there but for the most part, they did what they wanted to do. It's a fun way to see their personalities too.

Sparkler time


Dusk finally arrived so time to bring out the sparklers.


Not All Sparklers Are Created Equal

These are the two different kinds of sparklers that I have personally used while taking photos of my kids and I learned pretty quick that not all sparklers are created equal. The traditional sparklers tend to last about 20 seconds from ignite to burn out. That is not much time if you have to light more than one or have to mess around with your settings. After getting frustrated that the gas station sparklers do not give me much time to play and interact with my kids while shooting, I purchased the "send off" sparklers from Amazon that are often used for weddings which give a burn time of 2 minutes. I also recommend a butane lighter! It made it so much easier to light multiple sparklers at once for all the group shot interaction.


CAMERA SETTINGS :

You can totally put your camera in automatic and just shoot away if you don't know how to use manual mode. I'd even use shutter speed priority mode too. But if you are feeling it, here are the settings for I used in manual.

1) F/Stop : If you shoot wide open at 1.4, you will be able to capture the sparklers a little more blurry/bokeh look. If you close it up a bit to 3 or higher you will get the sharper image of the individual sparks. I went between 2 and 2.8.

2) Shutter Speed: The slower your shutter speed, the longer the trails you will get from the sparks coming off the sparkler. The higher the shutter speed, the more individual sparks you will capture. IF you like the trails, start around 1/100 and go up. I stayed around 1/125-1/160 for the first set of sparkler pictures while there was still light out.

3) ISO : I wasn't too concerned with my ISO setting because I was more concentrated on my shutter speed. This is why I mentioned that you can shoot in shutter speed priority mode so the camera will automatically choose the ISO to fit the situation. I started with my ISO at 100 and ended up going up to 250.


HAVE FUN!

As I mentioned before, I did not do much prompting at all in this session. My sole purpose was capturing some fun.

Painting with sparklers


Here is where the CREATIVE PRACTICE comes in for me. I have been wanting to try this for over a year and I'm so glad I finally went for it. We had the MOST fun here!

Here are some things I learned before we got started:

  1. You have to use a tripod. This is a non negotiable. You will be shooting with your camera's shutter speed "wide open" so anything you can do to stabilize the camera more is necessary.
  2. When to shoot : Right before the sun goes down.
  3. Settings :
  • ISO - start with 100 (don't worry about ISO too much because the shutter speed will determine how much light we let in. (Same as before.)
  • Aperture - start at f/4. This gives you just the right depth of field.
  • f/1.4 : more sparkly "thick" lines
  • f/8 : refined "thin" lines
  • Shutter Speed - start with 3 second shutter speed. That means you have 3 seconds to draw whatever you want.


We started a little rocky. It took a minute to figure things out but every now and then we would nail a shot and we all would get so excited. The kids were able to draw a few hearts, stars, Pac Man, Max drew a #8 (he recently had just turned 8 so that was really cute). We got a "C" for Caroline and an "M" for Maddi. And sooooo many squiggles and swirls.