Proud Photography Blog

More than any other kinds of photographs, those of your children as they grow up are the ones that you will treasure the rest of you life. Don’t let this mean that every picture has to be perfect. If kids are not perfect, why should their pictures be? What you need to do is try not just to capture the ways your children look, but capture memories. Pictures of them doing things that you associate with them or candid ones which reveal a side the parents’ not normally see are the ones that have the most value are the years pass. So what is the best way to go about it?

•    Try to capture moments in time that you want to remember. Don’t keep waiting for the perfect shot – the moment will have passed. Take the posed ones by all means, even those of your child sticking his tongue out at the camera! But the most valuable one are those that relate to an incident, no matter how minor, in your family’s life.
•    Children have far more moods than adults. Try and capture the moods of your children in their various forms – serous, concentrating on home work, being curious, or even sad or angry. Don’t be afraid to capture negative emotions or feeling – they are part of your child’s growing up.
•    You can’t always have your camera ready and there will be hundreds of moments you miss. Don’t waste time feeling sorry about them. Try and make your won moments. Is you son into basketball? Be ready with the camera when he’s playing. If your daughter into painting? Be there when she is at work. Be patient. In the beginning they will be self conscious of your being around with the camera, but that will soon wear off.
•    Not everything has to be in close up. Try using backgrounds as part of the image of your children being in a specific time and place in their lives. For example a group of disheveled children leaning against a white fence will create the “Tom Sawyer” look. Just be careful of elements that may distract from the subject you are trying to capture.
•    Try and get down to the children’s level. Always shooting from a height may create too much of a “small kids” effect and rob a child of individual characteristics. Taking pictures from the child’s level creates as greater sense of individual identity. Even pictures involving a lot of background are often more effective if the whole scene is pictured from the child’s point of view.
•    You should also look at creatively using angles and perspectives. A well known professional effect is to place children on winding walkways to portray the journey through childhood or at the bottom of a flight of stairs to create a sense of the long journey that the children still have to make in life.
•    A good rule of the thumb for taking children’s photographs is that natural light is always better as it creates a greater feeling of warmth and naturalness.