Picture This!

Hiya kids! Is everyone ready to head back to school? Do you have your High School Musical backpack and Hanna Montana lunchbox? Oh, I see you don't but your children do. That makes sense.

The idea behind today's blog is to get you, the parent, ready for your child's first day of school photo extravaganza! I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter how old your offspring are, you'll still take those special moment photos.

Now the first thing you need to do is make sure you've got the battery(ies) charged and in the camera. Next, be sure the memory card is loaded. Those are the easiest steps.

Please welcome back to the modeling stage, Ciara! She will now demonstrate for you the kinds of photos you can aim for. Teenage facial expressions and body language are 100% natural.

You may also want try try a few of your cameras functions such as the Portrait mode. The way this feature works is the camera understands you're going to take a headshot (head and shoulders) of someone. It will set the f-stop so that the background is softer than the subject.

Your point and shoot may also be equipped with Face Priority or Face Recognition. This is especially handy if you're photographing more than one person. The software will guide the camera to look for the shape of a face or multiple faces and then focus on whichever is closest. This eliminates having the school bus in focus and the kids out of focus.

I used Face Priority for the 3/4 shot.

Another function found in the Nikon Coolpix 7600 is Portrait Figure. Meaning that it will look for the shape of a face even if you are shooting the entire person.

Good luck getting these future nostalgic pictures.

A few other reminders. Make sure your kids remember to take lunch with them.

Homework should be done at home, not at the bus stop.

Kim Possible, Ron Stoppable, and the Red Power Ranger images artistically reworked for comedic affect. Barrie gave me an idea and I ran with it.