Parents love documenting their growing children and often ask how they can take better photos of their kids. Our children love to run from us when they see the camera coming their way because some of us have taken the fun out of taking pictures. In a talk I gave recently on shooting amazing pictures for your posts, I gave some advice on taking great pictures of your kids and people portraits:
Shoot on their Level
Take pictures of your children on their level. Get down and engage them from their point of view. The pictures will have a levelof intimacy you cannot achieve shooting them from above. If you are using a DSLR camera, shoot with a fast lens, like a 50mm. My children never stayed still long enough for me to perfectly compose a shot, so I had to be ready to run or crawl behind them and capture the moment. Faster shutter speeds allow you to freeze the motion.
Focus on their eyes
The eyes tell the story of a person’s heart. Your child is naturally expressive and their eyes reveal that better than any smile. It goes back to creating a level of intimacy between you, your child and the person viewing the picture. Focus on their eyes and deepen the story of your image.
Let them be kids
While it may be important to you to have your child perfectly still and take the perfect picture, it isn’t always the best thing for them. Let your kid be who they are. Let their personality come out and let them simply be who they are. If they love to jump around, let them.
It is your job to learn how to use the features of your camera to capture the shot. Believe it or not, posed shots are rarely the ones that capture your child’s spirit. One of the techniques I shared in my talk is to tell your child you will take three pictures of them sitting in the pose, then STICK to only taking those three pictures. They will trust you and not grow frustrated when you continually try to make them sit still. Give it a try, it usually works.
Get in close
When composing pictures of your child, take a variety of full body shots and close up shots. Fill the frame with their face and focus on simple details of their features. Getting close will connect you with your child and it will show all over their face. . I don’t know about you, but I love children’s long, lush eyelashes. Macro lenses or macro mode work well for capturing these kinds of details.
Pay attention to what is in the background
Be mindful of what is going on in the background of your image. You want the focus to be on your child and the best way to direct the viewer of your image to your main subject is to keep the background simple and uncluttered. Shooting with your aperture wide open will blur your background and help make the background less distracting.
One more thing, make the photo session fun. If you want to guarantee horrible pictures and your child running away from you and you r camera in the future, show your frustration. Remember, they are children, not science experiments. Keep things light and fun and you will end up with great pictures and memories.
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These are terrific reminders. Thank you. I like the tip to just take 3 shots. I often bribe with a treat if they deal with the irritations of a photo shoot, but that might be terrible.
It is not terrible at all! LOL I figure if it gets them to sit still for a few minutes, then do what you need to do. Kids can not help they love to constantly be moving. It is what makes them so exciting to photograph.
I’ve gotta play around with the still features of my DSLR. I’ve got so many fun lenses I’ve collected for video, my 50mm being one of them. That puppy needs some kid face lovin’.
Yes, it does! It is one of my favorite lenses. I stupidly sold an old one I had and picked up a lens that was horrible to replace it. Now to save up for a really good 50mm for photos and video.