It has been awhile,
I have been busy with kids school, being sick, kids being sick, currently the wife is, work, looking for more work, a birthday (42 feels the same as 40 and 41), looking into trips, working on a photo album, and just regular life. Looking at the photo album brought my attention back to a problem photographers have myself included. We are behind the camera more often than in front of it. I went through thousands of pictures to catch our family album up to date. I am in maybe 1/10th of the pictures, and that is a high estimate.
There are a few ways around this. First have a significant other that likes to take pictures as much as you do (it didn’t work out well for me in that department), trust strangers to use your camera (more on this later), use self timer, use a remote, use an intervalometer, or teach your child the craft.
If you have a significant other that takes pictures at the same frequency as you then you are one lucky person and can probably stop reading this right now. If you are in the same boat that I am in then read on.
Trusting strangers to take pictures for you can be a little complicated. I have had so many issues with this from the focus being off to things being in the frame to the exposure being way off etc. What I have found that works well is putting it on manual and taking a test shot of who ever else is going to be in the frame then I look at the pictures after they take them to make sure the focus is right and there wasn’t camera shake. It works well but is generally a posed picture.
A self timer is okay in a pinch, the worst part is running back after the shutter is pressed. Again better for posed pictures.
Using a remote is better, I have pulled off some candid looking group photos with them, it was usually trigger a bunch of times to get a single good candid. It is used in place of the camera timer release and is better for posed pictures.
The intervalometer can have great results for candid pictures. The trick is forgetting that it is taking pictures which can be harder than it seems. One of the best results using one like this was picking plums with my daughters in the backyard. There were over 300 pictures in about an hour which got narrowed down to 48. I was in them doing an activity with my daughters. It was worth it. One that I liked it seen below.
The last option is to teach a child to take the pictures. I am working on this currently. I don’t recommend getting a children’s cameras because they are horrible quality and they usually have games and such on them. My children have had a few and they are only ever okay when outside in bright sunlight. I bought my kids some old film cameras. they loved them. Once they realized they would have to wait for the pictures they weren’t too happy with them. They did have fun shooting rolls of film though. It gave them a taste of what it was like back when I was growing up. They currently share a Canon Powershot that has a neck strap on it. They have taken some good pictures with it and they enjoy it. They have taken pictures with my DSLRs before again with the neck strap. Like seat belts it is a good idea to teach children safe camera handling at an early age.
I think that my 6 year old took this in Yosemite 2016
So do what you can to make it into your photo albums candidly so when you are looking through photo albums in your old age it has some images of you. If you work it out right then the images of you won’t just be selfies and the occasional posed picture at an event.