Photograph your small children

Our staff photographers at The Main Event are often told by clients that The Main Event photos they have their children are the best images they have of their kids, hands down. This often prompts the question: How can I do this at home?

Creating a visual archive of your family ranks high up there in our books! Here is a short list from The Main Event’s resident photographers on how best to photograph your small children.

Show them in action

Children are constantly on the move, as any parent with a toddler can attest to. Embrace it. You’ll get some great action shots showing movement if you set your camera right. Children on swings, slides, merry-go-rounds, playing sports, etc … These are great activities showing your child having fun. If you want to “freeze” the action, set your camera to its fastest shutter speed with a higher ISO (be careful not to go too high, you’ll start getting noisy images.) If you’re still using your auto settings, just use the sports setting. Don’t stop with freezing the action though. If you want to create movement in the images for added flare you can slow that shutter speed down. Pan the camera with the movement and you’ll get those images where the background is moving but the subject is mostly in focus. Don’t get frustrated with your first results; this does take a little practice and experimenting

Get on their level

Children are tiny people so you’ll need to get down to their eye level. There is nothing we hate more than seeing family albums that feature the tops of heads. Crouching down to take the image will help keep your child’s body in the right proportions and avoid those strange distortions where the child has an abnormally large head. This rule isn’t hard and fast however. Experimenting with angles can be fun.

Become a spy

Now I would never actually tell you to spy on your kids (and please, only spy on your kiddos), but taking photographs of your kids when they are oblivious to your presence can lead to some great images. It’s a great way to capture the child’s personality. If they become totally engrossed whilst playing with their toys then get a good close-up of their expression. Use your camera’s portrait setting to help blur out the background on this exercise.

Forget the smile

Portraits where children were forced to smile look, well … forced. So forget about it. Kids are constantly learning about their surroundings so they are naturally thinkers. You can even pose them this way sometimes by having them rest their chin on their hands. If you must get a smile then try playing peek-a-boo behind the camera, hold up their favorite toy or have an assistant (or family member) stand right next to you (or almost under your lens) use a colorful feather duster and pretend to tickle them with it

Focus on the child

Make your child the center of attention. After all, the photograph isn’t about the background most of the time. This is where that portrait setting (usually a silhouette of a head) on your digital camera comes in handy. The camera tries it’s best to blur the background so the subject of your image stands out more (known as a shallow depth of field). You can do this manually by setting your shutter to f/2.8 if you’ve got the lens or f/5.6 for most other digital cameras. Anything in between is fine also.