It’s the season of fall… the best time of the year to to capture beautiful photos of your family with a pumpkin patch photoshoot. With all the leaves changing color, and the beautiful fall flowers in bloom, not to mention it’s not scorching hot out, so you can bare to be in the sun for more than a couple minutes! Fall is the best!
Each fall we have a few traditions. Check out this past post for lots of fun fall traditions! But one of my most favorite traditions, and probably the kids most favorite is visiting the pumpkin patch. And guess what?!?! The pumpkin patch is the best place to get all those beautiful family fall photos!!
Note: This first photo is the only photo in this post that I didn’t take on my iPhone. It was on Shawnikins phone and then sent to me, so it’s a we bit blurry (anyone know how to send photos from a non-iPhone to an iPhone without this happening?). But I love how the random passing by photographer (love those people) got the whole scene of the leaning (almost collapsing) tower and trees behind us in the photo too! One of my all time favorite family photos that we have!
Disclosure: I am by no means a professional photographer. I don’t know the secrets of great photos, and I don’t have a fancy camera (just my iPhone camera), but I love how my photos turn out, and I’ll show you how you can get the look of these photos too!
TIPS TO GET BEAUTIFUL PUMPKIN PATCH PHOTOS:
- Take a 1000 photos!! Lol… Yup… If you want good photos and you are not a professional photographer like myself, you need to take 1000 photos of each scene, so that you will probably get at least one or two good ones. Crazy but very true!
- Try not to get random people you don’t know in the background, or in any part of your photos. The day we went to the pumpkin patch it was packed!! Yet there is not a single random background person in any of these photos. It looks like we had they whole place to ourselves!! If there are people in the background of your shot, change the direction you are shooting.
- Try to take photos with lots of texture in the background. I feel like texture equals COZY!! Examples of texture at the pumpkin patch would be… Pumpkins, hay bails, flowers, cornfields, animals, or even a cute fence.
- Use the portrait mode on your iPhone (I don’t know if other phones have this setting or not??). When you go into your camera just swipe once to the left for portrait mode. This will blur the background of your photos when you are taking photos of your subject that are about 2 meters away. I take almost all of my photos in this mode, and it has been a game changer in the quality of my photos. USE IT!
- Try to take photos with the light facing the subject (although direct sun is not ideal, but you get what you get sometimes). Photos with the sun behind the person will make the person look darker and make it hard to make true skin tone colors. Example: 3 photos down of Ivy sitting on the pumpkins. Her face looks orange because the light is reflecting off the pumpkins and not her face. It’s hard to edit things like that. Anyone know a trick to correcting color when in a shadow, I’d love to hear from you!!
- Edit your photos!!! There are two free ways that I edit my photos on my phone depending on if I need to edit a bunch of photos, or just one:
- If I’m going to edit just one or two photos, I’ll edit them in the photos section of my phone (It does a very good job).
- If I’m going to edit a bunch of photos I upload them to the app “Lightroom” which is free on your phone, but costs some money to use on a desktop. I downloaded it from the app store on my phone, and the reason I use it for multiple photos is because you can edit one photo, and then when you go to the next photo you can apply all the same edits from the previous photo to the next photo!! Saving you lots of time!! I just do small tweaks for each photo after. This is useful for photos that are all taken at the same time, in the same light, so that all the photo edits look the same!
Ahhhhhhh… Now you know all my secrets!! Now onto the next subject…
IDEAS OF PLACES TO TAKE PHOTOS AT THE PUMPKIN PATCH:
Pumpkin Patch Photoshoot Op #1: While collecting your pumpkins!! or sitting on pumpkins, or just looking at pumpkins.
Pumpkin Patch Photoshoot Op #2: On some hay bails, or running by some hay bails, or posing by the hay bails. Hay is cute! Lol…
Pumpkin Patch Photoshoot Op #3: While playing the pumpkin patch games. Not my favorite place to take photos, but if you can create an interesting angle they can be cute!
Pumpkin Patch Photoshoot Op #4: While sniffing the flowers. Obvious cuteness factor here. I wish I had got more of their face during this small snippet of time that they would actually do this, but…
Pumpkin Patch Photoshoot Op #5: “How tall this fall” sign photo opportunity. Ivy wouldn’t get out of the first photo with Corbin, so I told her she could go behind the sign if she wanted. I didn’t even notice that she stuck her head around and winked in the photo… LOL… I love capturing funny special little photos like this one. She makes me laugh so much!
Pumpkin Patch Photoshoot Op #6: In the cornfield. If your pumpkin patch has a corn maze (which ours does, but I absolutely hate the feeling of being lost, so we don’t ever go in there. Maybe one day when the kids are much older, and they really want to go in the maze, when everyone’s good with directions, and I’ve got my coffee and Bailey’s to sooth my nerves… Lol… But until then…), I highly recommend exploring in that crazy corn maze, and having a photoshoot in the maze. I have seen some super cute photos in there, of other people and their families of course… here we are outside the corn maze. Works just as good for me… wink!
Pumpkin Patch Photoshoot Op #7: With the farm animals. And the highlight of the pumpkin patch adventure for Corbin seeing “A big fat pig… pee on a chicken!!!” And Ivy loved feeding the goats! So much fun was had!
This family pumpkin patch adventure is over for another year. We can’t wait to go back next year, already!
I hope you feel inspired to create some special photo memories at the pumpkin patch this year. With my super secret tips that you all know now, I’m sure you will be able to create some frame worthy photos too!
Until next time, have so much fun making memories this fall season, and don’t forget to have fun creating beautiful things everyday!
XO JCL
