Category: Children’s portraits

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Children's portraits Santa Fe

Day in the Life of a pre-K/kindergarten class

I recently spent a whole day photographing my daughter’s pre-K/kindergarten class at the Gentle Nudge School in Santa Fe, NM.

There were several reasons for wanting to do this. Firstly, after two very happy years at Nudge, my daughter will be starting a new school in the autumn, and I wanted to have a record of her and her friends. Secondly, it was a whole day shooting candid and relaxed shots of cute kids (mostly aged five and six) – which to me is a pretty much perfect scenario. Also, I love the school myself and have a great deal of respect and affection for the work the teachers do there, and I wanted to share that with the other parents and a wider audience (that would be you).

I’m sure parents always wonder what life is like for their kids at school. Not just what they do, but how they do it, what it’s like in this world that’s so familiar to the children and so closed off from the parents, because we’re just not there very much.

So when I took my daughter to school one Tuesday a couple of weeks ago, I just got out my cameras and stayed. Naomi Brackett, the director of the school, had liked my idea and allowed me to wander around all day unimpeded, and I never got the sense that what was going on was in any way different to what would have happened if I’d not been there.

What I Learned

I sort of knew this before, but my day underlined it: teachers work hard, all the time. There are three teachers in the combined pre-K and K class, and the whole class of around 20 is never doing the same thing all at once – they’re split into smaller groups for different activities.

How the teachers keep track of everyone, deal with minor alarms, provide help and advice and prepare for the next thing is beyond me. Even doing rest time when the younger kids were sleeping and the older ones quietly writing or drawing in their journals, there was no rest for the teachers. I was exhausted at the end of the day, and I was just standing around taking photographs.

The ability of the children to concentrate on their activities was also impressive. They focussed intently on the current task, and then smoothly shifted to their next task. Just as impressive was the good-natured way the children got on with each other – sharing and helping were much to the fore.

I’ve no idea what it’s like at other schools, but what I saw at Nudge was a deeply comfortable sense of teamwork that the kids had with the teachers. The children were full participants and collaborators in the day, rather than just passive consumers of it, doing what they were told. The teachers shaped the program of course, but the kids were comfortable with it, and committed to it with their attention and goodwill. It was great to see.

Technical details

With the photographs, I was aiming to tell the story of the day in a number of ways:

  • exposition: shots of what the kids were doing (making posters, mixing salt dough, whatever), and how they were doing it
  • portraits: individual images of the children
  • interactions: children reacting to each other, or with the teachers
  • details: that showed more about the life of the school

As this was a personal project, I didn’t have a shot list to fulfil, or an obligation to get an equal amount of images of all the children, but I tried to be as expansive as possible in my coverage, while still being true to the moments and situations that appealed most to me.

At times I’d talk to the children and ask them to tell me or show me what they were working on, but most of the time I shot more candidly, and it was these photographs that I like most. It takes time just to blend in to the background enough that no-one’s paying attention to you, but it was definitely worth it.

I shot with my Canon 5D Mk ii (with my 85mm f/1.8 attached), and my 5D matched with my 35mm f/2. Given the low light in the old adobe rooms of the school (and my personal taste) I was at or near wide open (so under f/2.8) pretty much all day inside.

Conclusion

I’m proud of the images from the day, and very pleased I have such a record of a place that means so much to our whole family.

I left a coil-bound book of around 100 of the images up at the school for the teachers and other parents to look at, and the feedback from them has been very touching. Two sets of parents of children who are departing at the end of the school year have even asked for their own copies 0f the whole book.

It was a very rewarding project to undertake – maybe there’s a personal project near to your heart that you could start on?

Slideshow

(best viewed full-screen)

Categories
Children's portraits Santa Fe

Baby Lillian and the wobbles

Taking photographs of children for friends was the first photography I did that wasn’t just for my own amusement. It’s how a lot of children’s photographers start, and it’s still something I really like to do, but it had been a while since I’d done a session for friends.

Maybe this was the reason I was nervous during the shoot for my friends Tim and Heather, and their lovely daughter Lillian, who was around 2 months old.

Sometimes you’re confident you’re getting good images. Other times you feel you’re just shooting dross and are waiting for (and partly willing) the client to tell you to go home and forget the whole thing. This was more like the latter feeling, but my friends probably wouldn’t have thrown me out.

These wobbles beset me more with young babies than older kids, perhaps because it’s harder to form a connection with a young baby. Normally, if the child is having fun and is tolerating my foolishness, then I’m happy and I’m reasonably sure the images will be good. But if you’re not getting any feedback from the subject (because they’re too young to give it), there’s less to feed off, and you start wondering if you’re just a faker.

That said, I was happy when I got home and looked at the images I’d got. Tim and Heather are delighted new parents, and are reacting to the drastic up-ending of their lives with good grace, good humor and real affection, and the pictures show some of that. There’s not much more you can do when a baby’s first home – I remember feeling that it was a day of huge achievements if I managed to dress myself and make it down the driveway to the mailbox.

Lillian is bright and aware – she seemed very curious about me – and like most babies, looks positively angelic when she sleeps.

So even when you’re not sure you’re getting the shots you want, keeping an open mind, asking yourself questions while you’re shooting, and reacting honestly to what you see in front of you get you through. That, and a sleeping baby shot

Here’s an Animoto slideshow of more of the images from the day.

 

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Children's portraits Santa Fe

Shooting at the Tumbledown Party

(David Moore)

I don’t normally shoot events, as children and family portrait sessions are my main work, but when my friend Elisa Dry from asked me to take photos at their recent party, I had to say yes.

My daughter started going there when she was 2 and it really boosted her physical confidence as well as being a lot of fun. I also did some shoots of their classes a little while ago (some of the images on their website are mine).

Elisa was throwing an appreciation party for all the coaches, volunteers and staff that make Tumbledown such a great place. It was a good opportunity to get some individual images for the studio wall, but also get some family and kids’ photos at the same time.

The party was at the Cowgirl Hall of Fame here in Santa Fe, in their Western-themed private room, complete with wood-clad walls and low ceilings. There were no quiet corners to set up in, and it was all a bit tight on space.

(David Moore)

I ended up setting up in front of the fire, and there being no room for a backdrop, we used the fireplace stonework instead. The room was pretty dark and there wasn’t really any space for two lights, so I shot with a single flash off-camera on a light-stand with a shoot-through umbrella.

The flash was triggered with my Alien Bee remotes, and the setup worked pretty well considering the constraints.
(David Moore)

A fill light from the left and a hair light from behind would have made everyone stand out a little more, but this wasn’t a studio shoot.

The main thing was that everyone was friendly and happy in their shots – it’s a little like being a stand-up comedian corralling people and putting them at their ease in an unusual situation.

Being in front of a stranger with a big camera and a funny accent must seem peculiar, especially in a room full of your friends and family.

We got through all the coaches’ individual shots, the groups and some individual shots of the kids before I left them to the rest of their night.

And I got a big old plate of barbecue with all the fixings to take with me – a nice bonus.

Thanks to Elisa for thinking of me, and thanks to all the great folks from Tumbledown for making it all run smoothly.

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Children's portraits Tips/Tutorials

New guest Post for DPS: 10 Tips to Help You get the Most out of Your New DSLR

The nice folks at Digital Photography School have posted another of my guest posts for them: 10 tips to help you get the most out of your new DSLR.

It’s aimed at people who might have just got a new camera over the holidays, and are wondering where to start.

And if you’ve just arrived on my site from reading the DPS article, it’s great to see you, and please think about following me on Facebook or Twitter, or subscribing to the email newsletter for the site.

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Children's portraits News

Client Favourites from 2010

The second part of my end of year round-up (see the first part here), this time featuring the work I’ve done for clients this year. From children’s shoots to work at the Santa Fe International Folk Art Market.

Happy New Year to everyone, and here’s to a great 2011 with better children’s photographs for everyone!

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Children's portraits Tips/Tutorials

Feeling is everything

You want to get great photos of your kids? Remember just one thing:
Feeling is everything.

If your pictures communicate real emotion, then it doesn’t matter if they’re not perfectly exposed, or if the background has some clutter – they’re still a hundred times better than a perfectly composed and beautifully shot image that doesn’t communicate anything.

You can only capture that feeling if the kid is feeling it. A genuinely happy child smiles with their whole face, not just their mouth. And cheesing (or is that cheezing?) – that fixed grimace smile that kids adopt at a very young age – is  nothing but a sign that they’re not feeling what they’re pretending to feel.

Not every emotion your pictures communicate has to be happy, of course. A shot of a child concentrating hard on something can be riveting, or an image that communicates sadness can be equally moving.

Not Just One Way Traffic

Of course, the child isn’t the only one doing the feeling here. The images you choose to make and the way you do it says a lot about your mood too.

If you’re feeling a little lost or isolated, then placing the child in a largely empty frame with their head turned away can say more about you than them.

But most of the time I’m trying to connect to the emotion of the kids on a shoot – if someone’s shy and reserved, then I’ll be  quiet and gentle too, if someone’s leaping about I’ll try and reflect that energy myself and communicate it in the photographs. But I’m in the final images somewhere, I know.

This is one of my favourite photos of my daughter (and her beloved teenage friend Sophie). Taken with my iPhone 3G, it's not a very good photo in lots of ways, but it captures a precious feeling, so I love it.

Technique is necessary not sufficient

‘Ah,’ you say, ‘But isn’t a technically perfect photograph of real feeling better than a shot of the same emotion that’s underexposed and has a tree growing out of the kid’s head?’.

The answer of course is yes. Which is why it’s worth studying all you can and building up some solid technique if you’re photographing your own children.

It’s also why you might hire a professional photographer to take the shots of your child – they should be better at getting the kids to be themselves in the less than normal situation of a photo session.

They should also be better at picking the moments to capture the real emotion. And they should also be better at composing the image and getting it technically perfect (in camera and with their post processing and printing).

What you’re also getting with a pro is (one would hope) something of their personal vision – their take on childhood.

Altogether, that’s a pretty rare and expensively acquired skillset, so you’ll have to be prepared to pay for the pro’s ability and time.

But if you’re looking through galleries of photographs (your own or someone else’s)  and you see photographs of kids that look great when you squint but don’t really deliver much impact when you really look closely, the chances are what’s missing is that genuine emotion.

And capturing that is something that should work on yourself if you’re interested in making great images of children (or anybody, for that matter).

Like I said, feeling is everything.

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Children's portraits Tips/Tutorials

Tips for Photographing Children’s Parties

Make sure to shoot the key moments. (Canon 5D. EF 85mm f/1.8 lens at f/2.2. ISO 1600 1/250 sec -2/3 EV)

Parties would seem to be a great opportunity to take photographs of your children having fun. And it’s an event you want to capture for posterity – especially if it’s a birthday or other special occasion.

But capturing good images can be more difficult than you’d think. Fast-moving cake-fuelled children, indifferent light and lots of visual clutter all offer challenges.

Here are some tips for getting the most out of a children’s party

1) Don’t shoot from your normal height

Getting down to eye level with the children often produces better results than shooting down on them from the normal parent-view height. The pictures are more involving and you don’t just see the tops of little heads.

Alternatively, shooting from directly above, or way down low can also produce some interesting results

Changing the angle can produce an interesting version of a classic party event.

2) Mix up the type of shots

I mainly shoot candid shots of the children with a reasonably long lens (most often a prime 85mm f/1.8 on a full-frame camera), but even with a single prime lens it’s worth looking for a range of shots.

The cake, the pile of presents and other details will help set the scene, as will wider shots of the room and bunches of kids.

The key is to imagine you’re telling the story of the party through your series of photographs – what images would you need to explain it someone who wasn’t there?

Don't forget to shoot some details that help tell the story of the party.

You can often get some of the details before too many people arrive, when you’ve got more time. Before and after shots of the scene of the party can also work well – especially if there’s a piñata and lots of wrapping paper involved.

3) Remember whose party it is

Especially if it’s your own child’s party, don’t forget that they’re the ones who should have the most attention paid to them photographically. I speak from hard experience on this one. At one of my daughter’s birthday parties I took roughly an equal amount of photographs of everyone there, just shooting whatever appealed to me.

As it turned out, not many of the shots of my daughter turned out to be that great, which was unfortunate but also ridiculous on my part – whatever else you photograph, make sure you have plenty of good shots of the child whose party it is.

4) Shoot the key moments

You’ll probably spend most of your time getting candid shots of everyone enjoying themselves, but there will also be some must-have moments, like the birthday boy blowing out the candles, or the attacks on the defenceless piñata. If it’s not your party, check with the hosts about what’s planned so you don’t miss the important elements.

A note on the candle blowing photograph. This can be tricky to capture well, and you can’t really ask for a re-shoot. So here’s how I try and approach it.

  • make sure your flash is off if you have one, so the face is lit by the lovely warm candle light (the brighter the ambient light in the room, the less you’ll see the light of the candle, though)
  • I use exposure compensation to underexpose by -2/3 or so, which will darken the shot a little, creating a bit more drama and emphasis on the face
  • if you’re shooting indoors and it’s not very bright, watch that you’re not choosing an aperture that will result in too narrow a depth of field, unless that’s what you intend. If you’re in close at f/2, what’s in focus is likely to a very thin sliver (probably not both candle and face if you’re shooting head-on)
  • burst mode (if you’re camera has it) will give you the best chance of getting a good shot of the moment the candle is blown out. Sometimes kids can look a little odd as they puff out their cheeks and blow, so having lots of images to choose from can help
  • kids all tend to gather round the cake with wide eyes, so if there’s time a wider shot of all the friends staring can be worth it, too

5) Party etiquette

If it’s your party, then shoot away, but if it’s someone else’s then you should check with the hosts that it’s OK (often they’ll be delighted that there’s a keen photographer taking pictures – make sure to share them, though). This is especially important if there are friends of friends there that don’t know you – even if the hosts are happy for you to shoot, be aware and sensitive to particular parents’ wishes if they’re not keen on you photographing their child.

You should also make sure to be respectful and friendly to the kids – they’re at the party to enjoy themselves not to follow instructions from grown-ups they might not know that well. So let them do their thing without intervening, or introduce yourself and make taking photographs part of the fun – showing them the results of their antics on the back of the camera for example.

6) Technical issues

Especially in the summer, there can be a lot of indoor/outdoor mixing at parties, so make sure you change your ISO and other settings to reflect the different lighting conditions. In these situations I often leave the camera in Auto White Balance mode and make any necessary white balance adjustments later (I shoot RAW, though, so if you shoot jpgs you’ll have less lee-way on this).

I tend to shoot in Aperture Priority mode, which gives me quick control of depth of field as I make decisions about what sort of images I want. But I’m always checking the shutter speed is fast enough to freeze the motion of the fast kids (unless I’m deliberately going for some motion blur). I tend not to use flash at all, but if I were to use it I’d employ a diffuser and/or bounce the flash to avoid it overpowering the scene.

A tripod would just get in the way, and won’t freeze motion anyway, so leave it at home and handhold. As mentioned above, burst mode will give you more options of capturing a crucial scene successfully.

Conclusion

The main point of party is to have fun, so unless you’re on the clock while you’re shooting, remember that first of all you should be enjoying yourself. But I hope these tips will leave you with some memorable party photographs to help you remember what a good time you and the guests had.

I’d love to hear your suggestions and tips for taking better party photographs – feel free to share them in the comments below.

Categories
Children's portraits Tips/Tutorials

Learn your craft then forget it

One of my wife’s teachers in architecture school wisely told his charges, ‘The bird of inspiration is not going to take a dump on your paper in the shape of your design.’

He was arguing that you have to put yourself in a position for inspiration to strike. Be at your desk with your skills and techniques honed, working away at stuff. Then you might get ‘lucky’.

The necessity of learning your craft is undeniable, and while I’m not pretending I’ve got anywhere near mastering it, I’m learning and I try to pass on tips and suggestions here that will help others. As my tagline says, I’m committed to ‘better children’s photographs for everyone’.

But for most types of photography – and definitely if you’re photographing children – you need both to learn your craft and then be able forget about in some ways while you’re shooting. If you take a photo with a 1/100 second shutter speed, even within that single second you had a 99% chance of not getting the particular shot you did. It’s amazing we get anything half-decent at all.

So when I’m shooting, I’m trying to think rationally about my backgrounds or composition. But most often I don’t have time. I trust that somewhere in my head there’s a bit of me that’s assessing what would make a good shot, moving my feet to get a new position that cuts out something distracting or brings more light into the eyes. But sometimes if you have to think about it, you’re taking too long.

So I’ll set the camera up (almost always on Aperture Priority, pretty close to wide open – say f/2.2) and then don’t worry about thoughtfully composing a technically perfect shot. Instead, what I’m looking for is emotion, because that’s what powers a lot of my photographs, and it’s easier to assess that quickly.

The most technically proficient shot is meaningless if it doesn’t communicate something – all that craft has to be in the service of something more important.

The image above shows what I mean. I took it at one of my daughter’s friend’s birthday parties. (Even when no-one’s paying me, I’ll be the one taking photos of kids I know.)

My daughter Fionnuala loves her kindergarten teacher Naomi with an intensity that’s wonderful to see (Naomi also taught her last year, so this is a long-term relationship). I was talking to Naomi when Fionnuala came up and snuggled into her. Instinctively, Naomi put her hand on Fionnuala’s head, and seeing that, I pulled the camera up to my face and got this shot.

What I saw was a sweet personal moment, but also a more universal image of nurturing and love in Fionnuala’s dreamy expression and the affection communicated in Naomi’s protective gesture .

At the time of course I wasn’t thinking this at a level I could express in words – I was probably thinking something more like ‘Ahh, there’s something there, where’s my camera!’.

The black and white treatment seemed to simplify things further, and I’m very happy with the way it turned out.

In fact, it only works well on a universal level because it has a personal truth to it. Writers are often told to write what they know because the more specific they get, the more (counterintuitively) what they’re saying has universal currency.

So if you’re a parent looking to take better photos learn your craft, and then have it in the background while you tell stories that are unique to you and your family.

If you’ve got stories to tell about what you’re thinking about while you’re shooting, I’d love to hear them.

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Children's portraits News

Autumn shoot with three daughters

The weather has turned decidedly cold here in New Mexico today, but it was a warm and bright autumnal afternoon when I met up with Lauren, Mike and their three daughters in the park recently for a shoot.

The older girls in good spirits, crispy leaves, a bright sun but some nice shade under the trees all added up to some fun on the main shoot day.

But poor baby Vivi had missed her nap so was out of sorts though, so we reconvened at the same spot a couple of days later for her shots, and the groups of her with her big sisters.

Here are some of my favourites from the day. Mike and Lauren were looking for some images for their Christmas cards, and for printing and framing individual portraits of the children.

Let me know if you’re in the Santa Fe or Albuquerque area and would like something similar – not long now before the Holidays are upon us.

(Tech note for those who are interested: All shots were taken with a Canon 5D using a EF 85mm f/1.8 lens. Processing in Apple Aperture.)

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Children's portraits News Tips/Tutorials

Guest Post on DPS: 6 Steps to Take ‘Guerilla’ Photos of your Children

I’m very happy to say that this week’s post of tips and advice has reached a wider audience than my regular ones.

My guest post for the great Digital Photography School is now up: “6 Steps to Take ‘Guerilla’ Photos of your Children”

It looks at how sometimes the best photos of your kids come from a casual approach and having the camera handy

Guerilla Photos of your Children 1.jpg

Check it out over there, and thanks to the DPS folks for publishing my post.