When you take a family photo over the holidays, position the people in the photo in the shape of a pyramid. This will make for a fun photo in which it will be easy to see everyone’s face and they will be at various heights. You might have to use a aperture of F11 or higher to make sure that everybody’s face is nice and sharp. You don’t want that back row to be slightly out of focus. Use manual focus or tell your camera to focus on the middle row, not the people closest to you. Take few test shots and look at the image on the back of your camera for that sharp focus, adjust the aperture as necessary until you get what you want.
If you’re using the a flash and you probably should be, make sure that the red eye setting in on and make sure that the people in the photo are at least six feet from the background. This will minimize the shadows on the background.
Happy Shooting.
