Tips for Taking Great Prom and Graduation Pictures

Before you start taking prom and graduation pictures, make sure you're familiar with the camera, particularly if you're using an SLR or mirrorless model ^[1], which offer more controls and settings than a point-and-shoot. (For more information on each category, check out our digital camera buying guide ^[2].) Yes, you can photograph your subjects in auto mode, much like you do with your smartphone ^[3], but for a photo like this, you ideally want to have more say in composing the final image. So take some time to understand the tools at your disposal.

A friend of mine who's a professional photographer once told me it's smart to think of a camera as a foreign country. To truly understand how to speak its "language," you need to spend some time in its midst. Page through the instruction manual, then shoot some test shots, experimenting with the settings.

To raise up your portraits, play around with the depth-of-field. That's a great way to direct all eyes to your model's beautiful face, as I did in the photos above. By choosing a shallow depth-of-field, I brought the imagery in the foreground into sharp focus, reducing everything in the background to amorphous blobs of light and shadow.

To do that, you'll need a lens that has a wide aperture (that is, f/stops such as f/2.8 or f/2). And that in turn means you need to know how to adjust the aperture on your camera.

You should also familiarize yourself with any accessories you have. If you own an external flash, which generally slides into the hot shoe on top of your SLR or mirrorless camera, you'll want to know how to change the amount of light the strobe emits. (Some built-in pop-up flashes allow you to make those adjustments, too.)

And don't forget the basic stuff: Make sure the camera and flash are fully charged in advance of your shoot. If they use disposable batteries ^[4], have a fresh set handy.