A few weeks ago, my teenager asked me to take a few photos of her while we were visiting my son at camp in Washington D.C., but she kept moving through her poses too quickly that all I kept getting were photos of her in motion. Not so great for the ‘gram, Mom! Apparently, she uses a trick to get cute photos of herself that I didn’t know about. Turns out, it’s a smart way to grab great photos of your kids, especially if you’ve got ones who can never stand still.
Related: How to use Burst Mode to take great photos of your kids
Instead of snapping still photos, or even using the Burst Mode (which we’ve talked about here on Cool Mom Tech, and admittedly is very similar to this concept), my daughter takes actual video of herself (or of someone else). Then, she watches the video and grabs her favorites by screenshotting (you do know how to take screenshots, right?).
This way, you get way more options to choose from, and you don’t have to worry about hitting the right pose.
I’ve discovered it works really well with kids too, especially if you’ve got little ones who can’t stop moving, or who tend to not be themselves when you’re yelling “hold still” “SMILE!” at them.
You won’t be able to use this trick to get anything in Portrait Mode, but if you’re looking for some cute photos of your kids, or a series of adorable images, take a video of them instead of snapping stills. You might be surprised at how many great photos you get.
A word of warning. Not only are video stills lower quality than pictures, screenshotting a video lowers the quality even more. So you may end up with pretty low resolution pictures in the end.