When photographing children, the most important thing to keep in mind is not try to pose them cause they will never pose. They’d rather play than pose for a cam to take their picture. So one of the tips I wanna share with you today is, give them something to play with. Give them a teddy bear, a painting book, some Lego…. whatever you have that can keep them busy while you take your shots. Just make sure to choose your props carefully cause when a kid gets their hands on something, often times they won’t let it go so always give them something that you don’t mind it ending up in the photo.
You need to interact with the kid. Keep them happy and peppy. Always have a smile on your face, and start talking to them and asking them questions so when they raise up their heads to answer with an interesting look on their face, you can just take the shot right away.
Now if you’re shooting newborns, there are definitely some considerations. A newborn can’t really move around, or always interact. But you don’t need to have that stop you from getting a nice picture. Try some new unconventional approaches like, take off their diaper and have them butt naked. Then put them against a nice plain black or white background depending on their skin tone, or lay them on a soft textured blanket for example. Take your time, shoot from different perspectives, zoom in on their tiny little hands or feet, and so on.
Now if you wanna get a natural looking portrait of a tot, you need to get down to the child’s eye level. And always set your cam to continuous shooting mode and continuous focus and try to keep your hand on the shutter release button from time to time, taking multiple exposures in the hope of capturing some interesting reaction from the child.
