Capturing Natural Child Portraits
Capturing Natural Child Portraits
When it comes to capturing a photograph of your kids there is no better way than to try to picture them in a natural setting. Don't get me wrong, I think there are some excellent studio imagery of kids, but my preference is with more naturalistic portraits, capturing the essence of a child doing something they like brings more to a photo; in fact it makes the image for me. This will not be a list places or activities for you to use, but hopefully will give some useful tips on how to get the best out of the setting you decide is best for your portrait session.
Personality is Key
As with all portrait photography it is vital to get to know the subject a bit, so if it isn't your child, then watching them at play and interacting with others will help you discern their personality and aid you in gauging what sort of environment they would be best photographed in or which activity would bring out their personality most. Talking to the parents (obviously if it is your own child you would likely already know enough) will help as will talking to the child, find out what they like, and what they dislike etc. And importantly try to find out what would make them feel comfortable while being photographed; uncomfortable poses will make for an uncomfortable portrait.
Locations and Activities
When you know enough about the child, choosing the location should become easy, very often with children it will be in their local park, in their garden or on the beach, but put limits on choosing; my kids are nature lovers so out in the woods or by a lake suits their personalities much better. Finding an activity to photograph them doing will often dictate the location. If the child loves the swings at a park, your choice is made, but try to think away from clichs. I once took my boys to collect conkers and got some wonderful photos of them mid air jumping on the shells to try to get to the nut inside and picking through the leaf litter in their search, these now sit proudly on our sideboard.
Lighting Choice
Once locations and activities are decided upon you need to assess lighting. In many situations natural sun light will be all you need, but this can often be too strong or not enough. Individual circumstances dictate what you need here, but some advice on different lighting tools follows.
When the sun is strong you will often find it to be the case that you need to use some form of fill light on faces to be able to see the details you would want (especially in a child's portrait), there are plenty of options available, often the cheapest (although not always the easiest) solution is to use some form of reflector angled to reflect the sun's rays back up onto the subject; while this is often great for naturalistic lighting it is limited, the brightness of the reflected light may not always be strong enough to eliminate shadow and your own ability to direct the light while taking the image both can cause issues, solo photographers will often be unable to position the reflector where it is needed (especially if it needs to be held) and be behind the camera at the same time. If this does turn out to be the case then flash (most often in the form of speedlights) will become your friend.
The built in flash of most cameras will work where reflectors are not viable, but the light is not easily controllable with these and can often be too harsh for this kind of work, so a dedicated external flash system is a useful tool in any photographers' kit bag. These units (often called speedlights) can be used on the cameras hot shoe or with cables or remote control units can be moved off the camera and positioned in where required. Set to be used as fill flash it will only help light the shadowy areas and not cause the image to become over expose. How to do this will depend a lot on the flash unit and the lighting conditions, but many tutorials for this type of work can easily be found online.
Capturing Movement
In some situations flash can be used in more "artistic" way, to stop the action of your subject or to stop part of the action, in low lighting conditions (or circumstances where you can get a slow shutter speed) setting the flash to sync with the front or rear curtain can give the impression of movement in a photograph. Here is an example; you have your subject child on a swing in the local park, the shutter speed is set to 1 second and the camera is on a tripod for stability, you set your flash up to flash with the rear curtain, and take some photos of the child in full swing, you should be able to see movement of the swing in most of the image but with a frozen end to the photo thus creating the impression of the swinging movement and bringing motion to your image. This movement will really bring life to an otherwise static image. In a similar way you can achieve movement without flash by, for example setting a slow (ish) shutter speed and positioning yourself opposite your child on a round-a-bout or similar, you will then capture a static image of the child but the movement will be surrounding them, these examples can be altered in many ways to suit your style, but it is often worth considering adding movement to child portraits as we know most children are balls of activity.
My parting comments are to enjoy taking the portraits, and enjoy the company of the children you are photographing, if you are having fun it will be evident in the final portrait and what really matters is that you (or your clients) like the image. Why are Many of Our Young Children Becoming Obese? The best scooter for kids on the market today! Ways to Develop Your Style When Drawing Cartoons Of Children Ideas for Catering a Children's Birthday Parties How to Pick Toys for Your Dog Make your kids happy with 5mm Powerful Magnet Balls Violin Lessons for kids: what you need to know Lukas Meets the Mustangs - Excerpt from the World's Smartest Horse Children's Book Ideas For Selecting Baby Boy Bedding When Does My Kid Need a Phone? Why Does My Child Need A Mobile Phone Licence? Fifteen Unwanted fat Burning Meals - Consuming Your Way To Natural Unwanted fat Reduction Keeping The Advantages Of Teen Abstinence In Mind