How to take better phone photos of your kids at home

Most of the photos of your kids on your phone are fine, and a few are great. The difference is rarely the phone. Mostly it's a handful of small habits that need no gear and no photography class, and they work just as well in a two-bedroom apartment in February as anywhere else.

Start with the window

Light does more than any setting on your phone, and the easiest good light in any house is a big window during the day. Put your kid facing it, or at a slight angle to it, and turn off the overhead lights. Mixing a warm ceiling bulb with daylight gives you a face that's two colors at once.

• Soft beats bright. If the sun is pouring in and throwing hard stripes across the floor, use a window on the shady side of the house, or pull a sheer curtain across.
• Don't put the window behind them. That's how you get a dark face in front of a glowing rectangle. Swap places so your back is to the window.
• Outside, find open shade. The shadow of the house or a big tree on a sunny day. Noon sun makes kids squint and puts dark shadows under their eyes.
• Skip the flash. It flattens faces, causes red eyes and turns the background black.

The hour before sunset is beautiful outside too. It's also the hour before dinner, so plan for that.

Get down to their level

Most kid photos are taken from adult height, looking down. That makes kids look small, fills the frame with floor and puts the top of their head where their face should be. Kneel, sit or lie on your stomach so the phone is at their eye height. It feels silly, and it's the one change that improves the most photos.

For a baby on a play mat, that means cheek on the carpet. For a seven-year-old on the couch, sit on the coffee table across from them.

Clean the lens

Phones live in pockets, diaper bags and sticky hands. A fingerprint on the lens gives every light a hazy glow and makes the whole photo look slightly foggy, and it's easy to blame the phone for it. Wipe the lens on a soft shirt before you start. Two seconds, and it fixes more "my camera is bad" photos than anything else here.

Use burst mode for anything that moves

Kids blink, turn and sneeze at exactly the wrong moment. Burst mode fires off a fast run of shots so one of them catches the face you wanted. Apple's guide to taking Burst mode shots shows how it works on each iPhone model. On Android it depends on the brand, so look in your camera settings for burst or for what holding the shutter button does.

Then delete the rest the same day. Forty near-identical shots kept "just in case" are the reason camera rolls become impossible to scroll.

Be careful with portrait mode

Portrait mode blurs the background so your kid stands out, and with a still subject in good light it looks lovely. With kids it has a few habits worth knowing:

• It needs the right distance. Too close or too far and it either won't kick in or gives you a strange edge.
• It struggles with flyaway hair, curls, glasses and anything held up near the face. Watch for strands that vanish into the blur or a halo around the head.
• In dim rooms it's often soft or grainy.
• It can feel slower to fire, which matters with a toddler.

A reasonable rule: regular photo mode for anything moving, portrait mode for a kid sitting still near a window. On an iPhone you can turn the effect off or adjust the blur afterward in the Photos app, as Apple's portrait guide explains, so a bad edge isn't always permanent.

Getting real smiles

"Say cheese" produces the same stiff grin on every kid in America. Real expressions come from doing something, not posing.

• Ask something ridiculous. "Is your nose made of cheese?" gets a real laugh more often than "smile."
• Let them be in charge. Ask them where you should stand, or let them take a picture of you first.
• Recruit a clown. Another adult standing right behind you, being silly, pulls their eyes toward the camera.
• Shoot what they already love doing. Reading with a sibling, building a tower, a popsicle on the back step.
• Take the shot right after the laugh. The face a second after a big laugh is often the best one: relaxed, eyes bright, mouth closed.

And stop before they're done. Five easy minutes beats twenty that end in tears. If they're over it, put the phone away. There's always tomorrow's light.

Toddlers who won't sit still

Don't try to make them sit. Set up where they'll end up anyway. Put a favorite toy near the window and wait for them to find it, with the camera already open so you're not fumbling when the moment comes.

• On an iPhone, press and hold on the spot where their face will be until you see AE/AF Lock. The phone stops refocusing every time they wobble.
• Bubbles, a song they love played from behind you, or a bit of peekaboo over the top of the phone buys you a few seconds of looking up.
• Snacks are allowed. A toddler working on a cracker stays in one place.
• Frame wider than you think you need and crop later. Cropping a toddler is easy. Rescuing one who ran out of the frame isn't.

Make the good ones findable

When you get a good one, mark it as a favorite right away. Six months from now, when school asks for a photo or a grandparent wants one for a frame, you'll find it in seconds instead of scrolling back through every Tuesday since spring.

If you're choosing a photo for a printed portrait, there are a couple of extra things to check, like a face turned toward the camera and no filters. Those are in our guide to choosing a photo for a custom portrait.