How to Take the Best Father’s Day Photos

On Fox News Channel today, I gave Father’s Day photography tips to new Fox and Friends host, Pete Hegseth. We showed pictures he has taken of his kids, and my job was to explain ways to improve them.

Click here for a video replay of the segment

We had prepared the segment to also show pictures of my children. This would have demonstrated the best techniques to photograph your children. Unfortunately breaking news out of Dallas forced the segment to be cut short, and we only showed pictures of Pete’s kids.

As a single dad and sole parent of 5 kids for almost 20 years now and as the owner of NJ’s biggest and coolest camera store, finding pictures of my children that illustrates any photography technique is easy. I have lots of them, and it’s a labor of love.

Here’s my Father’s Day present to you all – a more detailed explanation of the photography tips, with some recent pictures of my kids, to help you take great pictures of your children – for Father’s Day or any day.

Pete Picture 1: Pete and Family at Heinz Field for a Football Game

Pete Picture 1: Pete and Family at Heinz Field for a Football Game

Problem: Not lighted properly making it harder to see faces and expressions and half light and dark faces

Matt Picture 1: Three Daughters at College Graduation

Matt Picture 1: Three Daughters at College Graduation

Solution: Use Fill-Flash. Force your smartphone or camera to fire the flash even in daylight. It fills in the faces. If you use a real camera (not a phone) the camera balances the flash so other parts will also be exposed correctly too. With a real camera you can defocus the background making the subjects the focal point.

Pete Picture 2: Selfie with Son in Times Square

Pete Picture 2: Selfie with Son in Times Square

Problem: Subjects blocking location and the background is overexposed making it hard to see where you are (which is the point of a selfie).

Matt Picture 2: Selfie with daughter in Washington DC and Jefferson Memorial

Matt Picture 2: Selfie with daughter in Washington DC and Jefferson Memorial

Solution: Take a selfie from higher angle. Raise the camera up so that the light of background image is better balanced with faces and hold the camera far enough away to capture a better composition of location. Try to get an object in the background that screams where you are.

Pete Picture 3: Two Sons Sitting on Steps

Pete Picture 3: Two Sons Sitting on Steps

Problem: Faces out of focus, junk in background (chairs, railings, etc.) and fence coming out of subject’s head.

Matt Picture 3: Two Sons in Fun Pose

Matt Picture 3: Two Sons in Fun Pose

Solution: Use a real camera, not a phone to achieve sharper focus. Use a wide open aperture (low f-stop number) to defocus the background. This removes the distracting elements from the picture and brings more attention to the subjects.

Happy Father’s Day to you all. Create Better Pictures.

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