7 Children Portrait Photography Tips
Children portrait photography is fun and I personally like to take photos of children. Now after many of my friends have had kids lately I started taking more and more kids photographs. But when I started I had the same problem as many of you also experience. My initial challenges were how to make children smile and let them stand in one place so I can take the photo the way I like. But after few photography sessions I found out some of the most important things to take care when taking kids photos.
Here are some of the Children Portrait Photography Tips which may help you in taking better kids photographs.
- Be Patient
- Follow the Kids
- Capture Emotions Not Just Smile
- Locations
- Focus in Their Eyes
- Get Down to Their Level
- Carry Comfortable Gear
Working with children is always challenging. Kids of all age group are very unpredictable and they can change their mood because of no obvious reason. It does not matter what personality you have it may happen that children will respond to you or not. So the first and most important tip is to be patience. You have to take a different approach while you are taking photograph of different age groups. When taking children photos make the children comfortable and enjoy themselves during photo shoot. And doing so during the whole time you need a lot of patience.
When photographing kids it is always important to follow them this is because if you ask a kid to do something most of the time they do not do it naturally. Instead let them roam around, experience the environment and this will add lot of natural smile and activities to your photo shoot. One more important note that you should not say is “NO” to a kid during the photo shoot, this is because children does not like to listen to this word. Instead make the kid comfortable with you and the environment to get some amazing photographs.
Photographing kids is not just capturing smiles. It is about capturing pieces of time when the kid is happy, surprised, and anxious or doing something which will be interesting to see after years. So it’s not only smiles which you should capture but whole bunch of different natural activities of the kids.
Instead of shooting your photographs inside you can choose a different, more kid’s friendly location for the photo-shoot. You can take them to a nearby park or to a zoo; some kids like to be their own room in that case you should plan accordingly. So before the photography session keep in mind about 3-4 probable locations where you may do the session.
Make sure for most of your shots you should focus for eyes of the children. Turn on your spot focusing mode in your camera and choose eyes the focus point.
The best techniques of photography do not work with children. So instead of shooting at your own convenient position you have to get down to your knees and make the camera level with their eyes- this will give you better shots.
Sometimes you can make some exceptions to this and shoot directly above the kids and still you can get beautiful shots.
Photographing children is not an easy task and believe me it’s tiring. Most of the times during the photography session you will be on your feet coin various things. To make things little comfortable you can carry not so bulky lens and camera. Use some equipment which will allow you to move around more freely. Use simple and straight forward gears. No matter what camera you use you’ll need one with the least possible lag time between the pushing of the shutter button and the picture actually being taken.
The other important thing about photography gears is that make sure you put them in a better place during the photo session. Children may play with them.
These Children Portrait Photography Tips are just the beginning and there will be many more challenges and techniques you will learn during photographing children.
