Make Use of Natural Light

Your child is adorable.  Your friend's child is adorable.  So why does your friend's child look so much MORE adorable in pictures than yours?  That's easy... the lighting.  When photographing infants and children, making the most of natural light will make most of your pictures.

Lighting truly can make or break a picture.  You know what I mean.  You've seen those beach pictures where the people stand in front of the ocean (gotta include the ocean, right?) but they're faces are completely shadowed because the sun is behind them.  What could have been a perfectly lovely picture is ruined. 

Examples of Using Natural Light to Improve Your Photograph

Here's my son with his face in shadow:

 He's adorable and it's nice that there aren't any other people in the background, but you can't see him.  To improve the picture, I moved my body (let's face it, I can't control the sun or other vacationers) so that I was between my son and the sun (say that ten times fast).  I kept some water in the background and sacrificed the presence of strangers in the background.  My son is most definitely the focal pocal point so I'm okay with it.

This technique of moving so that you, the photographer, are between your subject and the sun can be applied anywhere, not just the beach.  But be careful - a noon day sun will most likely result in squinting.  It's better to time your photography sessions for the morning or afternoon if you can.  Obviously, if you are out taking action shots, you can't control the timing but if you're out to take some nice portraits, it's worth the wait. 

 Look at the difference the sun makes in these shots:

Enchance Naturally Available Light With Fill-Flash Camera Settings

Sometimes, you can "help" the sun along. In this next set, I set my flash from automatic to on so that it would flash even though we were in bright sun.  This leveled the lighting on my son's face: