Category: Children’s portraits

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Children's portraits Tips/Tutorials

A young girl’s adventure – digital storytelling revisited

We take photographs of our children for one main reason – to capture memories of the people we love. Images help us remember what they were like when they’re all grown up and living half a world away (like me – sorry, Mum).

Most of our memories get spun into stories – “Remember the time, when . . .?’ we ask each other, and the story we tell puts our loved one in context, as their actions reveal more about them.

And so while photos are a great way to trigger these stories, there are other techniques that can incorporate photos and also deepen the experience as well. Recently, I’ve been thinking more and more about different types of digital storytelling.

Just looking at individual photographs on our screens doesn’t fulfill all the potential current technology offers, and we don’t get a narrative flow that adds up to more of a story. Printed albums work because the images build on each other, and have a rhythm that is more rewarding for the person looking at them.

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Children's portraits

Autumn family photo shoot in Santa Fe

As snow and cold weather embrace Santa Fe this week, how about a reminder of what a gorgeous autumn we had?

This shoot for Laura and Rick and their children Merrick and Milana took place on a lovely Sunday afternoon, and featured Merrick’s signature red hat.

Sometimes the ‘correct’ thing to do for the shoot – it’s easier to photograph someone when they’re not wearing a wide-brimmed hat – isn’t the right thing.

Merrick wears his hat all the time, its’ a part of what makes him hime right now, and that needed to be shown in the session (I also shot some without the hat).

The session went really well, and some of the images were made in a lovely accordion folding holiday card – see below.

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Children's portraits

Photographing older children – a girl and her dogs

Shooting older children can be more tricky in some ways than, say, preschoolers – the older kids are more self-conscious and (wisely) more suspicious of a bloke with a funny accent showing up with a bag of cameras.

It’s my job to try and make people feel comfortable, which I do in a number of ways. Some of it is just personality, and I talk to children pretty much as I’d talk to adults, which seems to go down well whatever age they are. I also start slowly, learning a little more about the girl or boy, and assessing their temperament.

I tend to meet them where I find them – if they’re quiet and subdued, I’ll be quieter and smaller in my gestures and suggestions. If they’re energetic and full of beans, I’ll be running around with them in no time.

Here are some images from a shoot earlier this year, where the subject Heather (I’m not using her real name, at her parents’ request) tolerated me very graciously. She’s funny and open, and loves dogs – we got on well.

Shot in her yard in the early morning, we picked spots where the angled light would be attractive but not too harsh, and I used a reflector both to bounce light up into her face when she was backlit, or to diffuse some of the harsher light in other spots.

I got stains on the knees of my trousers from kneeling down to capture Heather playing with her dogs, but only an idiot wears light trousers to a photoshoot, so I got what I deserved.

I was talking to Heather throughout the whole shoot, and a couple of times she had this great look as she thought about the silly question I’d just asked her. I was very glad I caught it:

The dogs were friendly and keen to play, so I spent a little time getting their portraits too.

After seeing the photographs, Heather’s mum said, ‘you have a wonderful way of making people feel comfortable, especially children. [Heather] was very open with you and that was reflected in the photos.’

I couldn’t wish for better feedback.

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Children's portraits Tips/Tutorials

Telling richer stories – a hybrid video/stills approach to children’s photography

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about what children’s photography is actually about. You’d think it has a simple answer – it’s about taking photos of kids (duh).

That’s what we do, but that’s not why we do it, whether we’re professionals or taking photographs of our own children. Clients of mine say they want the photographs for a number of reasons – for holiday cards, to send to the grandparents, to mark a birthday, but I think what they really want is to tell the story of their child at a particular time in their life, and (even more importantly) to show how much they love them.

That’s certainly why I do an annual photo session with my own daughter every Fall (here are some images from 2009’s session). We use the same place – our kind neighbor’s lovely garden – and over time these images will build up to an ongoing record of her as she grows and changes.

We want her to look good in the photographs, of course, but more, we want to look authentically like her which is a little different. When I’m showing clients the photographs from their sessions, I can sometimes predict the images they’re going to love, but just as often they see in some of them something about their child that I can’t see (because I don’t know them well enough). It might be a facial expression (‘that’s so him’) or an activity, but it’s something that means more to them than I could have predicted.

Which is why I don’t shoot in a studio and pose the children – I want them to be really them, not to be little models for the afternoon, so they look like themselves when the images come off the camera.

Deepening the Experience

If parents want to tell the story of their child, then still images are definitely one excellent way.

But I’ve also been looking at incorporating video into the mix too. So for this year’s shoot with my daughter, I asked her a few questions on camera, and edited her answers together with some stills.

The real value is not so much in her answers (though these will be nice to have in a few years’ time), but in watching her answer them. Hearing her voice, seeing how she moves – these are the things that bring her to life. The video elements, together with the stills, tell a richer story about her than the stills alone.

Not Hard to Do

This approach is something you can do easily – I shot the video on my Canon 5D II, using an external microphone (that wasn’t quite close enough to my daughter), but you could use any number of video shooting devices for it – iPhone, Flip, whatever. So long as it’s locked down on a tripod or something else similarly stable, you’ll be fine.

As with still photography, look for a spot where the light is relatively even and where the subject will looking out from shade to a brighter area, to get some catchlights that will make their eyes twinkle.

I edited it on iMovie on my Mac, using a free music track sourced from the great Vimeo music library.

I thought about stripping out the voice track and running her answers over some more photographs, but her facial expressions and reactions to the questions were so good that I just kept the audio and video together for the answers, and ducked the level of the audio track up for the photographs, and down for the video.

The grandparents completely loved it, and Fionnuala enjoyed the video session too. Definitely something to do for next year too. I’ll still be taking any number of still images, but I’m happy with the way the impromptu video session came out.

And if you’ve got some examples of a similar hybrid approach you’ve made yourself or seen elsewhere, I’d love to take a look at them.

 

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Children's portraits News

Photographing a Santa Fe Bar Mitzvah Party

A little while ago, I was happy to be asked to photograph a Bar Mitzvah party for a young man named Sam (pictured above),  held upstairs at the Santa Fe Community Convention Center. I’d done a headshot session for Sam before, and it was nice to see him and his parents again, especially on such a happy occasion.

It was a great evening, with a lovely setting up on the terrace of the Center, and a mixture of Sam’s school friends and older family friends and relatives as guests.

Photographing parties events like this is nerve-wracking to a degree, and being there as a professional is very different from just firing off some images as a guest.

There’s an obligation to get good shots of everyone there if it’s a small enough party (as this was) while also trying to get excellent shots of the key folks and key moments. Sometimes it’s the little details or less than crucial events that really tell the story of the party, so you have to look out for those too. And not get in people’s way, while they’re enjoying themselves.

On the other hand, it’s an honour to be invited into people’s special occasions, and the guests tend to be in a good mood and looking good, and are very tolerant of a photographer they don’t know milling about.

It’s hard work, but I was happy with the results I got, and more importantly, so were Sam and his parents.

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Children's portraits Tips/Tutorials

Imagine you’re talking to a friend – how to tell a story in your photos

In one of my other lives, I’m a journalist and writer. I used to write for The Irish Times in Dublin, I’ve published a book of travel writing (it’s a lasting regret that it has no photographs in it, but at the time I was taking rubbish photos), and I now write for New Mexico Magazine and other places at times. (I outlined what I learned about photography from being a writer here).

I’m storyteller when I’m stringing words together. And I’m increasingly realizing, they key to good images (at least of the style I prefer) is to be a good storyteller when you’ve got a camera in your hand.

A good picture, or a set of pictures, tells a story. Images can be beautifully lit and technically perfect, but if they doesn’t say something, then what’s the point?

Everything in the image needs to contribute to the narrative you intend. Sometimes what you’re trying to say is simple – this is a happy girl – but for more complicated events, it’s worth having a think about how best to get your message across: what to include and what to leave out.

Imagine you’re talking to a friend

Ashley Biggers, my talented editor at New Mexico Magazine recently made a suggestion about a travel piece I’m writing for her, which is also appropriate to making images at an event or portrait session:

‘Imagine you’re excitedly telling your friend about the best parts of your visit. What would you say?’

This gets to the heart of the matter – you wouldn’t start at the beginning and give equal importance to every last thing you did (‘First I drove there, then I parked the car, then I put on my coat . . . ‘), but you also wouldn’t spend all your time talking about one aspect of the event.

So in photography terms, you wouldn’t photograph everything, or only take lots of the same sort of photographs.

Some things are just more important than other things, and you’ll get excited over some things and not others – so keep asking yourself what those key things are and make sure you show them clearly.

Telling the story of a party

Our daughter had her sixth birthday recently, and chose a princess theme for party (naturally).

My wife had spent a lot of time and effort preparing the room for the party, going so far as to build a castle facade with working doors (she’s an architect).

As I photographed the event,  I wanted to make sure I set the scene with the images, as well capturing the key events.

When we look back in years to come, some of what we’ll want to recall will be the way the whole thing looked, not just tight shots of our daughter.

So if I’m telling you about what the party was like, I’d start with ‘The room looked amazing. We had tons of balloons all over the ceiling.’ (as you can see from the photograph at the top of this story)

‘There were princess sceptres to decorate. And Miss F’s mum made a fabulous castle facade with working doors and ramparts and stuff.’

‘Each time a new guest arrived, Miss F closed the door and then got really excited when they knocked and asked to come in. And all the princesses looked so cute sitting down at the table in their ‘castle’.’

‘They went outside and our older friend read them princess stories.’

If the photographs do their job, then the text descriptions are unnecessary – and the images add some details and visual appeal that the words don’t contain.

I have the obligatory photographs of my daughter blowing out the candles as well, but some of these wider shots (all taken with a 35mm lens) tell a more complete story of the day.

So don’t be afraid to shoot wide, and imagine you’re talking to someone about the highpoints of the event you’re photographing.

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Children's portraits Santa Fe Tips/Tutorials

It’s Showtime – tips for shooting a ballet performance

Recently I took photographs at my daughter’s ballet class, and really enjoyed the experience.

So when I arranged to take photographs of her class’ dress rehearsal and performance, I was looking forward to it immensely, but it threw up a new set of challenges that I had to deal with.

The practice studio had been bright, spacious and very easy to shoot in. I could follow the girls around, changing my point of view to get the light I wanted or minimize some background clutter.

The location for the performance on the other hand (the theatre of the Scottish Rite Temple in Santa Fe) was dark and cramped (at least around the stage).

Gorgeous and fascinating. no doubt, but dark and I couldn’t move around at all.

At least for the dress rehearsal, I was able to squat down just off the stage, but that’s where all the girls from the other classes were waiting, so it was all a bit tight.

Allegra Lillard, the amazing Director of Dance for Joy, kept everything moving smoothly and energetically, but like any dress rehearsal there was some waiting around.

Even sitting up against a wall waiting for their turn, there’s something hugely endearing about little girls in full ballet outfits. My daughter’s class were models of patience until it was time to practice the grand finale – the first time they’d been up on stage with all the other (older) classes.

They were a little nervous going on to the stage, but soon reveled in their place in the limelight.

Practicing their own number came next, and they ran through it like small seasoned professionals.

If the rehearsal was tricky, then getting shots on the day was going to be even harder.

The house lights would be down, so the gorgeous space was even darker, and I was confined to my seat in the fourth or fifth row.

But I brought the camera anyway, and hoped for the best – the rich warm stage set and lavish surroundings were too good to miss, when combined with little ballerinas.

The ratio of keepers to rejects wasn’t that great, but I was very happy with those I got.

Four tips for capturing ballet

1) Choose your moment – in any performance, there are moments of stillness that are worth looking out for.The image above left captures a point when my daughter had momentarily struck a pose – it was the end of one gesture, just before the start of another move, and as such it has a strength that works well. It’s certainly possible to get a great shot in mid-twirl or run (and these would communicate more dynamism than poise), but it was the quieter moments that appealed to me (and they’re easier to get right, especially if the light’s dodgy).

2) Tell the whole story – With children, you want to tell the story of their whole experience, not just the performance. So the shots of waiting around, being ushered onto the stage, or their big smile afterwards at the curtain call are all as valuable as your images of their performance itself. With older children or adults, you might want to emphasize the performance itself (their technique or form,  or timing with the other dancers). But with younger kids, the imperfections of their performances make their personalities shine through.

3) Think both wide and narrow – It’s tempting to think you should just go with the longest lens you have, but you might miss some good compositions that way. I shot with my now-standard combination of two bodies, one with with a 35mm f/2 and one with an 85mm/f1.8 on the other.  It partly depends how far you are from the stage as to what your focal length options should be, but you’ll want to be able to capture most of the width of the stage for the shots of the whole group. You’ll also want enough length for picking out individual poses and expressions.

4) Keep the shutter speed as high as you can – to freeze the movement (unless you’re going for a nice deliberate blur to communicate movement), then you’ll want to keep the shutter speed above 1/100 at the slowest. Some of the above images were shot at around 1/100 sec f/2 or f/3 at ISO 1000, with the ISO being pushed up to 4000 for some of the performance  shots. I’ll take some digital noise on an otherwise sharp image than a noise-free shot of messy blur. So bump up the ISO and/or shoot as wide open as you can (i.e using a lower f-number to let in more light)

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Children's portraits Tips/Tutorials

From pixels to products – Why you should print your photographs

If you’re a digital photographer, then you’ve likely got hard drives full of images. Some of them you’ve hardly looked at since they were imported, while others you’ve slaved over in processing, and shared widely online.

But until you’ve printed them out, your images haven’t lived a full life.

It’s been busy here over the last few weeks as I shot and printed the preschool class photos and ‘day in the life’ project images, as well as ballet rehearsal and performance images. Client orders came in, and got turned into boxes containing prints, books and other goodies.

It underlined to me how much I enjoy making the images I make real. Here are a few product ideas that went down well recently:

1) The Luxe Book

For me, a custom-designed high-end book-bound album is the ultimate way to the tell story of a child at a certain age, or an event or class, for that matter. We’re wired for stories, and the ordered collection of images creates a narrative that draws you in.

I use Japanese-produced books from asukabook.com that offer amazing print quality and feel great in the hand. Imagine the most beautiful fine art coffee-table book you’ve ever seen, and now imagine your family’s images in that book. Consumer-grade self-fulfilled books (from Blurb.com, for example) offer a great way to get images into print, but Asukabooks are something else again (and are only available through approved professional photographers and designers). If you’re in Santa Fe, give me a shout and I’ll be happy to show you one of our samples.

As objects that you’ll enjoy for a very long time I think they’re unmatched. They work really well for families who want a lasting record of their session but aren’t the type of folks to display large wall art (which seems to be a regional thing – I know it happens elsewhere, but people here don’t go for a large family group print to go above the fireplace).

 

2) The Mini Accordion Book

Wallet-sized prints are great for carrying around, or giving to other family members, but they’re easily scuffed or dog-eared. A nice solution to this portable gallery problem is the small fold-out concertina book. The ones we use offer an elegant matte finish to the paper, a choice of silk covers and little magnetic closure so they don’t open up in a handbag. Grandmas love them as small portable brag books.

We get ours from ProDPI.com (professionals only again, I’m afraid), who do an excellent job of the printing and putting together.

 

3) Coil Bound Books

 

Pros often use these as proof books to show clients all the images from a big event to help them decide which ones they’ll order larger or include in a custom-designed book. They’re regular 4 x 6s or similar sizes printed on pro-grade photo paper then punched and coil-bound. With one image per page (I like mine with a border) they’re quick and relatively inexpensive to produce. For the Gentle Nudge day in the life shoot and the ballet rehearsal shoot, I had a book printed up so the parents could flick through all of the images easily.

I hadn’t planned it, but I got some orders for the whole book. For a self-contained event, like a party, for example, they make a nice object. Not as formal or beautiful as a custom-designed and printed book, but nice nonetheless. Ours come from ProDPI, but Mpix.com and Shutterfly.com both offer something similar, and you don’t need to be a pro to buy from either of those.

 

4) Any size print

People seem to study physical prints in a way they don’t look at the same image on screen. I really enjoyed handing out the 8 x 10 class photos to some of the parents on the last day of school and watching them pore over the faces. Larger is better, but even it’s just a set of 4 x 6s, I really believe it’s worth getting prints made regularly.

But if you’re going to print them, promise me you won’t take a disk to the local Walgreens or Target (if you’re in the US – if you’re elsewhere then I’m sure you have similar neighborhood pharmacies or one-hour print shops). You’d be amazed how differently different labs will print the same image, and it’s worth spending a little extra to get something you’re going to be happy with.

I use a pro lab for most of my printing needs, but on the regular consumer side, I’ve had good results with Shutterfly and especially Mpix.com which a branch of a big pro printing lab, so you might want to give them a try. Smugmug the photo sharing site run by people I have a lot of time for recommend BayPhoto, so they’re another suggestion.

 

Whether it’s the high-end coffee-table book or an envelope of floppies, I’d urge you to free your images from the backlit screen one way or another.

 

 

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Children's portraits Santa Fe

Little Ballerinas

Little girls love ballet and my daughter is no exception, so I was delighted when I got the chance to shoot her pre-ballet class at the Dance for Joy Studio in Santa Fe.

Their teacher Allegra Lillard is enthusiastic and caring, and the girls were clearly enjoying themselves at the same as learning a lot.

Most of the dancers were five or six years old, and in the images there’s a great mixture of the more grown-up elegant moments when they look like tiny ballerinas, and the more relaxed times when they’re just kids having fun.

Good Light, Good Subject, Can’t Lose

Warm sun filtered through the shades on the windows and was reflected by a huge mirror on the opposite wall, creating a flattering light, and with a class full of cute little girls it was hard to go wrong. The class is an hour long and there were around 100 images in the set I showed the other parents.

I shot mainly with the very nice 135 f/2 L (that I’d rented from borrowlenses.com), using my 50mm f/1.4 for some of the wider shots. I was looking for close-ups of faces, full-body shots of individual dancers, and interactions between the girls (with a few detail images thrown in).

 

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Children's portraits Santa Fe

How to photograph groups of children – a behind the scenes look

I had the great pleasure to be back at Gentle Nudge School the other day to take the class photos for the preschoolers (mainly three and four year-olds), and the pre-k/kindergarten class (mainly five and six year-olds).

My approach is to make things relatively loose but fast-moving. Keeping the children happy and not fussing over every last detail serves two purposes. Firstly, the more time we spend arranging the exact spacing and getting individual hands in ideal positions, the more likely it is that more kids are going to look miserable. Secondly, the children will look like themselves if they’re not cowed and overly orderly.

There’s a risk in this that one or two children will be doing something you really don’t want, but everyone else looks great. A more controlled approach would mean those couple of kids look better, but everyone else looks worse. The children meet in the middle, looking slightly stiff. That’s not the sort of image I want to make as a photographer, or buy as the father of one of the girls in the Pre-K/K class.

To increase my chances of getting more people at their best, I shoot in burst mode (five frames a second or so on my 5D Mark II). That means if someone’s blinking when I first press the shutter, there’s a good chance they’ll have finished blinking when I stop holding the shutter down.

I also use a tripod. It frees me to interact with the kids, and it also means I can swap heads between different frames if I have to – since the camera’s locked down the background won’t move, making the head swap much easier.

I’m really pleased with how the  finished images came out: