How to take amazing fall pumpkin patch photos of your children

Hey everyone! An annual tradition for our family is to take the kiddos to the pumpkin patch for some fall festivities! Some of my favorite photos over the years are snaps from these days. I have a lot of friends who also head to the pumpkin patch every year, so I wanted to do a quick tutorial on how to get some great photos of your kiddos!

What to bring to the pumpkin farm

Ingredients for success:

• Pretty fall day, preferably sunny and preferably either early morning or early evening before sunset. I love a sunlit glow for these photos. Try to avoid 11am-2pm as the middle of the day is typically horrible lighting for any outdoor shoot. Cloudy weather works okay too, but I definitely prefer a little sun.
• Your DSLR camera, and lens. I would recommend a low aperture lens with at least a 50mm focal length or more (see my post here on favorite lenses)
• Some cute clothes! I wouldn’t go overboard on this as I like my kids to actually have fun and play while we’re there! I try not to torture them with more than 15 minutes of photos. The rest of the time is for playing!
• A photo buddy who also wants to do photos of their kids, OR a relative- grandma/sister/mom – basically anyone who can lend an extra hand to help wrangle kiddos.
• I personally like to bring a wagon to pile kids, camera, pumpkins, or whatever else in. Carrying all of this junk all over a 10 acre farm is too exhausting. I have a foldable wagon that has been priceless to me. I use this thing everywhere, and it easily folds up and pops into the back of my vehicle.

Quick disclaimer: By clicking on these Amazon links and purchasing we do earn a very small commission. Amazon Affiliate statement: We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. 

• Baby wipes to wipe runny noses, or dirty fingers (that turn into dirty faces eventually haha)
• A change of clothes just in case your little one trips and falls – and ends up covered in mud.
• Some bribes and toys to help coax kiddos. The challenging part about a pumpkin farm is naturally the kids want to go play and have fun. They don’t want to do “boring” photos. LOL. I usually tell them we are going to do 15 minutes of photos first, and if they’re good the rest of the time they can play whatever they’d like. Candy/bubbles/funny toys can’t ever hurt your chances either. I’m all about the bribes. Haha

Camera and Lens Settings

Depending on the weather, you could have several different camera settings. I always shoot on manual to get the best results. I’ll give you my camera settings for several situations below. These could vary slightly depending on what time of day it is, how cloudy or sunny it is, or if you’re in a shaded area (like next to or underneath a building or in the shade under a tree). Worst case scenario, set your camera on “P” for program mode and let it shoot in auto if you can’t get my settings to work. But ideally, you’d like to be on manual to control your exposure and get the best results.

Here are a few hypothetical situations and their corresponding camera settings.

For all scenarios below, I would set my camera to Manual mode (M on the top wheel), and set the file type to large Jpeg or RAW depending on your preference. If you’re not sure about this, watch my video HERE for a tutorial on basic camera settings. In a nutshell, if you have Photoshop and want to pull your photos into Photoshop to perfect colors, choose RAW. If you don’t want to mess with all of that, set your camera to large Jpeg.

SCENARIO ONE: Sunny weather, an hour or two before sunset, NOT in the shade:

• Manual Mode (top wheel, “M”)
• ISO: 400. Consult your camera manual if you are not sure how to set these settings.
• White balance- shade or cloudy. Technically, it is sunny out but your subject’s face will be facing away from the sun in the shade, so I prefer shade or cloudy for my white balance setting (look for icons of a little house with shade next to it, or a little cloud)
• Focus- Auto focus
• Shutter speed 1/640th. Remember usually on your display it will just show “640”, not 1/640th (there’s not enough room on the display for the extra characters).
• Aperture of 2.8 (I prefer blurry backgrounds, so the lower you can get your aperture the better. My favorite versatile lens is a Tamron 2.8). Take a photo with these settings. Then hit playback and look at it. Too bright? Change your shutter speed to 1/800th. Or was the original shot too dark? Change shutter speed to a lower number, like 1/500th or 1/250th. Just don’t go below 1/125th as you may start to get blurred images.
• 
• Have a lens that won’t go down to 2.8 aperture? Try aperture 4.5, shutter speed 1/250th. Too bright? Change to shutter speed 1/500th. Or if the original was too dark? Try aperture 1/125th. Try not to ever go below shutter speed 1/125th though, if you do that your photos may start to be blurry.

SCENARIO TWO : Cloudy, or in the shade next to or under a building or tree.

• Manual Mode (top wheel, “M”)
• ISO: 800. Consult your camera manual if you don’t know how to change these settings 🙂
• White balance- shade or cloudy (look for icons of a little house with shade next to it, or a little cloud)
• Focus- Auto focus
• Shutter speed: 1/500th. Remember usually on your display it will just show “640”, not 1/640th (there’s not enough room on the display for the extra characters).
• Aperture of 2.8 (I prefer blurry backgrounds, so the lower you can get your aperture to me the better. My favorite Tamron lens is a 2.8). Take a photo with these settings. Then hit playback and look at it. Too bright? Up your shutter speed to 1/640th. Or is the original too dark? Lower your shutter speed to 1/250th, or 1/125th.
• Have a lens that won’t go down to 2.8 aperture? Try aperture 4.5, shutter speed 1/250th. Too bright? Change to shutter speed 1/500th. Or if the original was too dark? Try aperture 1/125th. Try not to ever go below shutter speed 1/125th though, if you do that your photos may start to be blurry.
• If you’ve tried the above settings and it’s still too dark, change your ISO to 1600 and repeat the steps 🙂

Again, worst case scenario if you can’t get the above ideas to work, turn your ISO to 800 and then turn the wheel on the top of your camera to “P” for program mode. You may not get quite as great of results, but you will walk away with something cute and usable on the auto mode! 🙂

A few notes before starting your photos:

I like to walk a lap around the farm and look for the best areas to shoot. Tell the kids that you’re going to explore first and see what things we really want to do. Find some areas that don’t have a ton of people in the background, or other distracting things that would take away from the photo. Next, check lighting. You do not want your kids or subject to be FACING the sun and you don’t want the sun shining directly on the side of their face (for instance you do NOT want 1/2 of their face is in sun and other 1/2 not in the sun). This will be awful lighting and will make your subject super squinty (no one likes looking AT the sun). Ideally you want them facing away from the sun- so sun behind them, or behind them and to the side a little so it is backlighting their hair and body. See examples below. If you can’t find that, find some areas in the shade…. Next to a building, under a tree, etc. That being said, I’m not a fan of VERY dark shade. So don’t go inside a dark building, or deep into the woods where it is super shady. You want it to still be bright in general, but in “light” shade if that makes sense. So to recap: Ideally you want no people or distracting things in the background, sun hitting the back of your subject, or in the shade.

Don’t forget about closeups. I love a sweet photo of your baby’s curly hair, or their chubby little hands holding a tiny pumpkin.

Final Notes – Remember to Have Fun!

Lastly, remember to enjoy this day. It’s easy to get caught up in getting a perfect photo. But to me, great memories with your kids and friends are more important than filling your social media feed with a bajillion pumpkin photos. Be sure to spend 10-15 minutes doing this, and then several hours enjoying the fall, your friends and family, and letting your play and make memories!

Questions? Comment below and I’ll do my best to answer any questions you may have! Also feel free to find us on Facebook, Instagram, or see Krista’s professional photography site HERE.