Take Turkey Day Family Portraits

How to take classic and not-so classic photos.

Dave Johnson

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Feature: Take Turkey Day Family Portraits

The roots of Thanksgiving go deep into U.S. history: It was declared a national holiday by George Washington way back in 1789. I wouldn't be surprised if Samuel Morse, the inventor of Morse code and one of the first to experiment with photography, tried corralling his family around the Thanksgiving table for a snapshot in 1840. Certainly, our modern celebration of the holiday includes snapping lots of pictures. And with the big event just days away, let's plan ahead for some great holiday pictures.

Capture the Dinner Table

A classic shot--no Thanksgiving photos are complete with it--is the dining room table, complete with fancy place settings, the main course, and all the trimmings. There are two common ways to get this shot: with people and without.

The more formal version of this classic shot is without people. For the best effect, take this picture from above. That probably means standing on a chair to get above the tall glasses at the near end of the table and see the entire spread. If you're poised too low, the view will be cluttered with place settings. You'll need to get the shot right after the last of the food has been positioned, but before everyone sits down, so you'll probably want to leave the camera nearby for the magic moment. As for focus, try to lock the focus on the near end of the table, and the rest of the table will probably stay reasonably in focus as well. Focus at the far end of the table, though, and you're a fuzzy foreground is likely to dominate the shot.

If you take the picture with everyone seated around the table, don't let it become a candid. In other words, focus everyone's attention on the camera and make sure no one is eating anything--pictures with people chewing are simply not attractive.

Take Some Portraits

While you'll want a few pictures with everyone in one big group, it's often easier to get good pictures if you think "tactically" and take smaller groups--like just the spouses or the siblings--or even single-person portraits.

You can certainly position your subjects in front of traditional holiday backgrounds; but this year, try to stage some portraits in more organic, natural settings, so they look a bit more candid. What do I mean? Take pictures of people carving the turkey, lighting the candles, washing the dishes, setting the table, and refilling the candy dish. These pictures can be more meaningful in the long run, because they strongly connect the people with the event.

If you go this route, though, be careful about your backgrounds. It's easy to end up shooting pictures in front of backgrounds so cluttered that they distract you from the people. For the dish-washing pictures, for instance, you may need to move the huge stack of dirty dishes out of the way so it doesn't look like you snuck into the local diner and started taking pictures of the dishwasher on a busy weekend.

Watch the Lighting

As you're taking pictures of smartly dressed guests, fancy dishes, and horns of plenty, don't forget about the lighting. Your digital camera tries hard, but its built-in flash is designed to throw light only about 8 or 10 feet--and even at that distance, the edges of a wide-angle shot will be dimmer than the center of the frame. What can you do? For starters, avoid taking indoor group shots so large that you must stand halfway across the room. If you're photographing more than a handful of people, take it outdoors, and shoot in the shade where direct sunlight won't shine right into the scene.

Indoors, 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 relying on a flash, I'd increase the camera's ISO to 400 or more so that you can properly expose your pictures in the limited indoor light of Thanksgiving afternoon. Another solution is to throw additional light sources on your subject. In particular, the holidays are a great opportunity to try candlelight. I like setting candles near people for Thanksgiving portraits because they cast a warm, flattering glow onto people's faces.

Not Perfect? No Problem

When you finally get your pictures onto the PC, you may find that all didn't go as planned. Use your favorite image editor to remove red eye, which you may have a lot of if you use your flash indoors, and reduce digital noise, which can happen if you shoot with a high ISO.

Dave's Favorites: Paint Your Photos

I'm no artist. I don't even know how to hold a paint brush, much less create a compelling painting. But armed with a program called Shortcut PhotoArtist, I have been able to make pictures that look like I recently took a few weekend courses in sketch drawing, charcoal painting, and a handful of other creative styles.

Here's how it works: When you load a photo into PhotoArtist, the main canvas is blank, but you see your picture in a pane on the side of the screen. Pick a style, like Sketch, Cartoonify, Crayon, or Canvas (there are about a dozen in all) and then paint that style into the canvas, picking up the details of your image as you go. It's sort of like using your image editor's Clone tool to transfer a picture to a new blank canvas, only you're transforming the picture with artistic filters as you go. It's a cool system, with a handful of handy features for customizing your creation. You can set the brush size and transparency level of your "paint," for instance, as well as erase and undo.

PhotoArtist lets you combine different effects in ways that would be difficult or impossible in an ordinary image editor. I converted a picture to a pencil sketch, for instance, and then filled in select details with the Crayon style. The results were both impressive and realistic. You can download a free trial of PhotoArtist or buy it for $49.

Q&A: How Do I Add a Flash to My Camera?

Is there any way to connect a remote flash to a digital camera that does not have a hot shoe? I would like to take photos of large groups of people, but the flash on most cameras is only good for about 10 to 12 feet.

--James Douglas, East Rutherford, New Jersey

Of course, it's always easiest when your camera and flash both have hot shoe connections--the standard rectangular connection on the top of many cameras. But if not, you have two options, James.

Often, digital cameras have something called a "PC sync socket." In this case, the PC doesn't stand for "personal computer"--instead, it connects your camera to an external flash unit. PC sync cables are decades old and are so universal you can find connections for them on almost all flash units and most digital cameras.

If you want to go wireless, consider a slave flash. They've gotten popular in the last few years because prices have dropped significantly, and now it's easy to get one very affordably. These units fire automatically when they sense that your camera's built-in flash has fired. You can mount one or more on tripods and throw a lot of light onto your scene.

Hot Pic of the Week

Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality, and technique. Every month, the best of the weekly winners gets a prize valued at between $15 and $50.

Here's how to enter: Send us your photograph in JPEG format, at a resolution no higher than 640 by 480 pixels. Entries at higher resolutions will be immediately disqualified. If necessary, use an image editing program to reduce the file size of your image before e-mailing it to us. Include the title of your photo along with a short description and how you photographed it. Don't forget to send your name, e-mail address, and postal address. Before entering, please read the full description of the contest rules and regulations.

This Week's Hot Pic: "To the Moon," by Paul McLaughlin, Palmdale, California

About this week's Hot Pic, Paul says: "I took this picture with my Sony DSC-F828. This is the annual Antelope Valley Labor Day Sky Parade in Palmdale, California. As you can see, landing sites must be chosen with care!"