How to Take Better Photos of Moms (Listen Up, Dads)
One of my favorite things is seeing moms in photos with their kids. But sometimes even the most well-meaning spouses can be…not great behind the camera. So! In partnership with Aura Frames — just in time for Mother’s Day — here are 12 tips for taking beautiful snapshots of the mothers in your life…
1. Look out for candid moments. The quickest way to become a great photographer is just to keep an eye out for sweet moments. Kids move quickly, so don’t hesitate: grab your phone and take a shot.
2. You don’t always need faces. Photos of feet or hands or people from the back can be so charming and tell a story on their own.
3. Take a LOT of photos. Seriously, take 30. One is bound to be good, and then she can pick her favorite. You can also use “live photo” mode. It will capture a few seconds before and after you snap. You can go back later and pick the best frame — aka the one where no one was blinking.
4. Take photos of views. If there’s a view, pull that camera out. Every. Single. Time.
5. Move the camera around. Positioning your camera above eye level often makes faces look brighter (think: fewer shadows) and more engaging. Also, move around while snapping photos. Different angles can make a big difference!
6. Remember the cuddles. “When I lost my mom, I realized I had a finite number of photos with her,” my friend Liz Libré once told me. “I want pictures of my arms around my own children, my body touching them. I want to be represented in my camera roll.” Same, oh my gosh.
7. Capture the daily routine, too. Photographing activities she does all the time — running errands, taking a kid to school, helping tie shoelaces — can feel real and beautiful.
8. Play around with light. Golden hour — in the morning or evening — is always soft and magical. If you’re indoors, switch off the overheads and move toward natural light by the windows.
9. Try black and white. If the lighting is wonky or the colors feel off, switch to black and white — it instantly looks classic. We especially do this on photos taken at night.
10. Offer to take photos with mom friends. Parenting takes a village, and it’s so nice to look back on times you were raising your children together.
11. Perfection isn’t necessary. Even a blurry photo can become an all-time favorite.
12. Enjoy the photos! Don’t let them waste away on your phone, soak up all the beauty with her. I’d highly recommend Aura digital frames, which let you easily share photos from multiple phones (you can invite friends and relatives through the app) and display them in an ever-changing carousel. My mom, my dad, my sister, my aunt, my cousin, and I all have Aura frames in our homes, and they help us feel like part of each other’s everyday lives. The frames are one of those things that bring so much joy, and they’d make a really meaningful Mother’s Day gift, don’t you think? xoxo
Bonus for all readers: Get $25 off this Aura frame with code CUPOFJO, good through May 13th.
Now, what would you add? We’d love to hear your photo tips. Thank you, Aura! xo
(Photos in this post from Joanna Goddard, Alison Piepmeyer, Jannelle Sanchez, Selena Ma, Erin Jang, Julia Robbs, Merie Subryan, Leah Fink, and Jenny Rosenstrach. Aura frame photos at the end by Julia Robbs. This post was sponsored by Aura Frames, whose digital picture frames we’ve loved and used for years. Thank you for supporting the brands that support Cup of Jo.)
Comments
51 commentsI got an Aura frame for my mom and we set it up so my kids and my siblings could send photos to it. She LOVES it. One of my favorite thing is going to visit her and seeing new photos pop up of my kids that I’ve never seen. Just them going about their everyday lives. Such a fun gift.
RE: the point about actually using the photos, I was being precious about it for years, trying to make these curated photo books, and it took SO long and I could never get them *just right.* I finally ordered 300 $.12 photos from Walgreens, bought some basic photo albums and just stuck them all in in chronological order. They aren’t curated but they’re done, and it was easy (and cheap), and they’re actually pretty cute! I like the way the whole page is taken up by glossy photos instead of all the white space in the photo books.
This just reminded me of reading a post on Cup of Jo, where a child was getting a ‘talk about their attitude’ in a picture from a vacation, we now also take pictures of our kids pouting on trips. We always laugh when it comes up on our Aura frame (which we love and bought one for all the grandparents).
one of my fave pics of us ever!
I would like dads to think about how sad and angry their kids will be at them one day…. when they realize dad is the reason they have very few pictures with their mom. Just take the damn pictures!
FIY, Aura also has great editing/deleting functionality. We erased the philandering son in law quite effortlessly 😄
HAH. This is quite a selling point!
We have a larger AURA frame in our living room that is solely dedicated to photos of our twin sons. My husband started it on the day I gave birth 2.5 years ago, and the frame pulls automatically from a Google album he created that pulls automatically from his phone camera (which is smart enough to only add photos that have photos of the boys), so it’s literally seamless and is always feeding us updated photos! No manually sending to the frame or even the google album. He also takes about 324890 photos a day and agrees with the sentiment that more is more when it comes to photos (and videos) of our boys. It’s crazy how much we enjoy the frame even though we see our boys all the time! It makes us nostalgic for the early days (should we have a third?! NO we say), makes us laugh, makes us feel all the love. It’s the best and truly a purchase we’d make again in the heartbeat. We’ve also gifted it to relatives many times!
Oh, I just want to say how much I love the photos of Joanna looking at her boys–the presence, the sheer attentiveness and awe and joy.
I almost never would comment on a sponsored post but my family LOVES our Aura. My parents got us one for Hanukkah and we then got one for my sister-in-law, who loves hers too. My 4 year old loves looking at the pictures that come up and asking where we were, who we were with, what we were doing then, etc. My husband’s family lives overseas and it’s so nice to constantly have these faces we don’t see every day in our line of sight.
Same, ours is by far the best grandparent gift we’ve ever gotten, and they are both holding up strong two years later!!! This post is actually making me think I need to get one for myself!!
I will say, of all technological advances, I do really love that it’s so easy to snap a photo or a memory now. My kids love looking through old photos from when they were young, and I don’t have that.. I don’t have many photos from my own childhood and many years are just gone that I wish I had some photographic evidence of – some memory. Take those photos!!!
I’m doubly recommending the Aura. The Christmas after I got married, we surprised both sets of parents with Aura frames that were pre-loaded with our wedding photos, and we had already sent access to all siblings for them to pre-load photos too. My MIL loved it so much she bought us an Aura for our wedding anniversary the next year. Still haven’t ordered a photobook for our wedding, but I love seeing the Aura every day! It’s ridiculously easy to update multiple frames at once.
Does anyone have an Aura Ink? I like the idea of having a cordless e frame that doesn’t glow so I can incorporate it into a gallery wall I’m working on. But I’ve also heard that e ink frames can make photos look a bit strange/off. Would love any thoughts!
I always felt like digital photo frames were a cheesy Bed Bath and Beyond gift, but we got my grandmother an Aura frame a few years ago, and it’s delightful! My extended family has upload access, so I can see what they’ve uploaded via the app, which is often more intimate than whatever makes the IG/FB cut. My grandmother is on IG too, but I like that she can see the best of us more easily, while she is sitting at her table reading or eating.
Growing up with a photographer as a dad and then somehow managing to find only photographing bfs, I was more than annoyed even seeing a camera/phone. With my 15 months old daughter I try to snap pictures, when she is not realising it and keeping it to a minimum. The way even young kids tend to pose for a camera bc everyone is taking pictures ALL THE TIME really puts me off.
Lotte, I so agree with you. My FIL drives me nuts constantly telling our babe to say “cheese”, which makes her face so weird…I always laugh remembering the CoJ tidbit about small Toby or Anton asking “is this a smile?” All that to say, make the photo madness end!
Agree with this! Although we have an AURA frame with about 823490 photos of our twin boys (see my comment above!), my husband NEVER asks them to pose, EVER. he manages to capture them candidly all the time, I don’t even notice him taking photos! It’s so wonderful seeing them exactly as they are instead of being forced to smile and stare at the camera. All to say, you can get great photos without your kids noticing and without turning them into robots.
My husband is much better than most at taking pictures of me and the kids…but the camera on his phone is so much worse than mine, so the pictures are usually not very good. It’s the thought that counts, but I also hope he gets a better phone soon.
I literally upgraded my phone “for work” and then gave mine to my husband for this very reason.
Dear CoJo babes, in case you wonder how to support a single mom friend – be their camera spouse. A few times a year nab photos (consent of the kids if they’re of that age) of their family when you’re all hanging out. It means the world to us!
Strongly agree! I am always so honored and excited to snap photos of my single mom friends and joke that I’m their Pete Sousa (Obama’s daily life photographer)
Thank you for saying this! Will try to do this more!
This is a great reminder. I do that a lot and when I manage to take a beautiful one, then I get it print and frame it as a gift.
I got this tip from a friend: If you want to take a group picture with reluctant kids, give them a fun prompt and take a picture with each one. Like “Pretend you just got a gift!” “Pretend you are on your way to the moon” etc. These have resulted in some of my favorite memories. Also, while some folks love their photo taken not everyone does and forcing them to have their picture taken will not actually help them like it more. I think in these cases less is more and respecting the boundaries of your family is a true gift.
I have strangely incorporated both of your thoughts into one situation, Ray! My daughter went through a phase when she was about 5 of hating having her photo taken, which was very difficult because she’s so darn cute. My friend gave her the idea during a tricky group photo of photo-bombing and it worked like a CHARM. She loved that she had the control and she loves being silly. We used to ask to photobomb photos that were of only her, ha! We would just point our phone camera toward a tree or something, and she would leap into frame! :)
What cloud storage service are we using for photos these days? I have thousands of beloved photos at this point and have run out of icloud storage and am running short on my google storage that I use as a backup… and my kids are little! Wondering if I should make the jump to much more icloud storage or if there’s some technology or cloud available specifically for this purpose that other camera-happy caregivers have found.
Miss Freddy (a professional photo organizer) has a lot of great ideas about all things photo storage and organization.
We use Smugmug to securely store all of our family photos, and it’s been great!
When my husband and I were dating, I mentioned offhandedly that if he thought ab it in the moment, I’d love some candid photos with my kid bc as a single parent, almost all I had were selfies. He never mentioned that he was taking them, but the next time Mother’s Day rolled around, he gave me one of those old school picture viewer things with all these photo discs full of pictures he had unknowingly taken of my daughter and I. Makes me feel weepy to type.
I’m crying!!!!
Swoon!!! This is so thoughtful.
Our daughter got us an Aura frame for Christmas and it was the best gift almost ever. We enjoy it every single day. Highly recommend!
Even your ads are interesting and worth reading :)
Ok, now this post is a public service! My partner and my closest friend are both lovely, hard-working men with a million helpful tendencies. Photographers they are not, however. They won’t ever take a picture unless I request it, and the results? I do believe they *mean well* – they certainly never grumble, at least. Hoping all you Mamas get the memories you deserve.
lol my brother takes photos of me with his daughter and I literally have a tripe chin and she looks GREAT! lol
Just sent this to my husband with the following message: “This is what I want for Mother’s Day. You to study this and incorporate it into our daily lives 💜”
Love the Aura I got for my husband awhile back! He’s always amazed, How did you get that on there so fast?! What I don’t like is the social media angle: for others to add their own photos, you have to let everyone chit chat re photos. I opted out of that piece — For those with hopeless/no photography spouses, make a pact with a few others. Ask people to intentionally take photos of you, with/without kids. I swear, there are more pics of our dog than of me so I’m going to follow my own advice here. ( But skip the daughter in law who can’t take a sharp photo for her life.)
Alison or whoever came up with packaging a standard product with this beautiful & helpful storyline: Chapeau!
My mom is a pretty talented amateur photographer. This means she’s always behind the camera and not in pictures. When it came time for our wedding I made her leave her camera at home and asked her to try and leave her phone in her purse. I also asked the photographer to keep an eye on her during the reception. I am pretty sure she was in almost every candid from the reception. I still smile thinking about that…
oh that is so wonderful, Amy!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAlzpKGiytU Too true!
hahhaahahha
I knew what that video was going to be before I clicked!
“But sometimes even the most well-meaning spouses can be…not great behind the camera” oh men get away with so much weaponized incompetence.
As a lesbian spouse who is an awful photographer – in this one, tiny, tiny case – it’s not just men 😂😂😂
As the very lucky wife of a professional photographer… I’m the problem, it’s me.
I agree Hana. I wasn’t always great behind the camera either. I learned. Because it’s important.
Portrait mode on iPhones can instantly bring attention to your subject. Little changes can make a big difference with light. Is the sun behind your subjects? Could be good, but might be even better if move to the other side of them. Harsh daylight or even shadows? Softer, more even light is often just a couple of steps away.
This is so, so true! I have not one really nice and flattering picture of myself with my firstborn. With my second born, I made an appointment in a baby shop where they did photoshoots that didn’t cost much. I am SO glad with these pictures and I am sorry for my son I don’t have pictures like that with him! My husband never takes pictures, so most of the pictures I have with my children are selfies… I’ve told him a million times from the beginning (I was warned by a friend!) but it didn’t help…
When my sweet pup died a few years ago, I asked for an aura frame for mother’s day. We had already gotten ones for my mom and husband’s mom. I can honestly say, I love that thing. Photos of dogs who are gone, my dad who is passed, childhood photos, my grandson…. and alas, the all too few photos of me, mama, with my girls when they were young. I wish there were more. I wish my husband had better understood my need to capture memories with them. There are a thousand GREAT photos of him, for every one with me. (The pre phone photo age) Now, I don’t regret a single selfie. I don’t regret a single time I snap one with my dogs or grand baby. These things just matter. They do. Thank you for this post!!! I hope siome other mamas get some perfect snaps.