It's that time of year again--the local pancake house has put pumpkin pancakes back on the menu, and my family is gearing up for the day when we'll have a turkey feast, a panoply of pies, and, yes, give thanks for another year. If Thanksgiving is a special day to get together with friends and family and share those things as well, then you probably want to capture moments throughout the day with your digital camera. In the past, I've given you some advice on how to get the best Thanksgiving photos--check out my past holiday photo shooting tips, for example. This year, I have a few additional suggestions to help you take some photos you can treasure for years to come.
1. Make a List
2. Work the Lighting
You can also try increasing your camera's ISO setting. This control--which affects how sensitive the camera is to light--is usually best left in its lowest position. But rather than use the flash, it's better to increase the camera's ISO to 400 or even higher so that you can take better advantage of the naturally available light. If it's an option, consider taking people outdoors for their portraits.
3. Use HDR Mode Instead of a Flash
You've probably seen lots of advice from me in years past about how to take better indoor photos, and most of those tips are, like the previous one, about lighting. This year, I've got a new suggestion for you: If your camera has a built-in high dynamic range mode, use it instead of the flash. Some cameras (especially camera phones like some iPhone and Windows Phone models) have an HDR mode that optimizes for light and dark areas to give you a better overall exposure without resorting to the flash. Even better, these built-in HDR modes tweak the exposure of a single photo instead of taking a series of shots and combining them, so the whole process is fairly fast (about the same as taking a normal shot).
4. Get Above the Fray
5. Combine the Best Parts of a Group Portrait With Photo Fuse
I've previously recommended Windows Live Photo Gallery's Photo Fuse as a way to more easily take great family portraits. Photo Fuse lets you swap elements among similar photos. So even if there's something wrong in each shot--people blinking, sneezing, whatever–you can just select the photos, choose Photo Fuse from the Create tab, and swap in different versions of each person's face until everyone looks their best.
What you might not realize, though--and indeed, this is a subtle Photo Fuse trick that slips past almost everyone--is that Photo Fuse doesn't only let you swap out faces. You can drag a selection box around any part of a photo and instantly choose from different versions of that scene. It's like being able to construct a photo based on alternate realities, like the recent coin flip episode of the TV show Community. You can swap out clean plates for dirty plates on the dining room table, put the dog in the background even if he got up from his nap by the time you snapped the "best" shot of mom; the choices are endless.
Hot Pic of the Week
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Julie writes: "I took this photo while enjoying a quiet day of photography. It caught my eye because you don't often see the end of train tracks. I took the photo with a Canon Digital Rebel XSi and then edited it to black & white.
Chris photographed this duck with a Canon Digital Rebel.
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This story, "Five Tips for Great Thanksgiving Photos" was originally published by PCWorld.