Quick-tips for kids' pictures

Try these quick & easy tips for great kid pictures

Think there’s no way you can take great pictures of children? Observe these easy quick-tips and you'll be taking superior kids’ photos with your family camera in no time, just like a pro.

REFLECT WINDOW LIGHT INSIDE

Indirect daylight coming through a window provides soft, natural lighting for kids’ pictures, but may still cause one side of your child to be in bright light and the other side to be in relative darkness. You can achieve the same overall soft lighting that the pros get by reflecting that beautiful, diffused window light back into the shadow areas of your subject. A white bed sheet, white styrofoam or white poster board will do the job, if positioned close to the child who is in turn positioned in the light coming in the window.

You can also use fill flash to fill in the shadow side of your kids' portraits taken with the window light behind them. It can be used alone or in conjunction with a reflector by bouncing its light off the reflector.

If there is strong sunlight streaming in (i.e. the direct rays of the sun), don’t have your child pose directly in it, because it is too harsh and will render a contrasty image.

Locate the child away from the strong rays while placing the reflector in them, angling it to create brighter reflected light in the shadow areas on the child. The reflected light may now be so bright as to place the former shadow areas in the brightest light. This is not always bad, but diffused light that comes in when the sun itself has gone past the window (i.e. no strong rays coming directly in; just daylight) or when the window faces north (or south in the southern hemisphere) is usually best for a softly-lit picture.

REFLECTED LIGHT OUTDOORS WORKS GREAT, TOO

Reflecting sunlight onto your subject works great outdoors, too!

Your child can be placed in the shade or with the sun behind him or her (this is called back-lighting) or side-lit where the sun is off to one side. If it is very bright, it can result in a lighting effect known as rim lighting. Ensure that the white reflector is placed in bright sun and angled so its reflected light is cast towards the shadow side of the child. Take your exposure reading when your child is in the reflected light. You will be delighted with the resulting pictures.

The closer the reflector is to your child, the more emphatic its effect in illuminating shadow areas will be. As long as you can keep the reflector out of your view when looking through the camera’s viewfinder, don’t be afraid to get the reflector within a foot or two of your child. Its reflected light will never be as bright as the actual sunlight, but it will have a very noticeable effect on illuminating and bringing out detail in the shadow areas.

THE BACKGROUND

Unless background detail is necessary to place a child (your subject) in context, keep the background simple so your subject is emphasized. A wrinkled bed sheet in a solid color makes a great backdrop. For a small child, a colored poster card (art board) that is larger than the child works, too. With older children (or bigger people), poster card is useful for head and shoulders close-ups.

Outdoors, a forest backdrop or landscaped hedge that fills the frame will do the job. If you choose something flat and featureless like a brick or stucco wall for a simple background, be sure to place your subject so that his or her shadow does not fall on the wall, and remember to fill the frame with your subject, not with a huge expanse of wall.

If your lens is adjustable, select an aperture that provides the right depth of field for your subject to be in focus while your background is thrown out of focus.

TRY A FAST FILM OR HIGHER SENSITIVITY SETTING IN YOUR DIGITAL CAMERA

Shooting indoors without flash? If the amount of daylight coming through a window is insufficient to let you use a shutter speed that allows you to hand-hold your camera or to eliminate blur from a child subject's movements, select a sensitivity setting in your digital camera of ISO 400 or even ISO 800 or an equivalent film speed if shooting film, and you will find you can shoot without flash in bright indoor areas.

You don’t need direct sunlight streaming in the windows on your juvenile subjects. Indirect daylight brightening a room through a window is perfect, and much softer and more diffused than the sun’s direct rays, which create harsh shadows and bright highlights. Fast films are fine for outdoors, too. They are particularly great for stop-action shots in bright light.

WHAT ABOUT BLACK & WHITE PICTURES?

Pictures of children taken on black and white film or using your digital camera's black-and-white mode seem to have an atmosphere or mood that is not available with color film. Some say it is more personal, concentrating more on character or personality revelation than color photography. Does shooting in black and white make you work harder to emphasize your subject without the help of color? It may. We don’t know for sure, but we do know that parents who have quality black and white images of their children often favor them over the color snapshots in the family album.

For film users - The problem with black and white film is its cost in terms of time and money after you have shot it. Unless you have your own darkroom or access to a friend's, it probably needs custom lab processing not available from your local color lab. This means it must be sent out to a specialty B&W lab. There is hope, though. Some black & white films like Kodak's T400 CN film or Ilford's XP2, can be color-processed so you don't have to send the film away and pay for custom processing, or develop and print it yourself. We encourage you to try a roll of color-process black-and-white film. It's developed in a standard color processor, like the one at your favorite one-hour shop, but the resulting negatives can be printed like regular black-and-white negatives. They can also be printed by your color shop, but you should expect some unusual (but not always unpleasant) tones in your images, from sepia to blue-gray, unless the technician doing the printing is experienced in color-correcting with this type of film and takes the time to suppress the overall color tones so your images show true shades of gray.

For digital photographers - Making prints in black-and-white from your digital image files can be done using your computer's printer or done professionally at most photo labs. Click on Printing digital images to learn more.

HAVE PATIENCE WITH KIDS

Don’t expect to look through your camera’s viewfinder at your child and find the perfect photograph, just waiting for you to press the shutter. It doesn’t work that way. You may have to wait for the right expression or pose. It takes patience. You can help it along by talking with your child while you hold the camera’s viewfinder to your eye or while it rests on a tripod with the lens pre-aimed at your child’s position, allowing you to remove your eye from the eyepiece to look directly at your young subject while you chat.

Talk about something of interest to your child. Kids are particularly interested in themselves, so remind them of something goofy or clever that they did. This is not the time to mention school grades, but rather something more esoteric from a child’s perspective of life, like what he or she thinks of the latest hit song or movie that appeals to their age group. If you capture their interest in discussion, your camera can capture their look of enthusiasm for the topic.

Look for an animated response to your questions or a sincere expression of your child’s feelings on an issue, and trip the shutter when it happens. By waiting until your child is deeply involved in explanation, you may catch a gloriously-revealing picture of his or her character, resolve and sincerity - the kind of picture you cannot really achieve any other way.

It may take a while. While you are talking and waiting, periodically confirm your framing. Has the camera moved slightly? Is there a non-distracting background? Have you left a little space above the head? Is the angle and quality of the light all right? Stay alert, though. Don't get too involved with the discussion that you overlook the objective. When the magic moment occurs and that "just right" expression happens, don’t hesitate. Depress the shutter and be ready to make a second exposure, or a third if the moment should last or get even better.

Patience in dealing with children subjects extends beyond waiting for the shot. Your child just may not be up for it at the time, no matter how eager you are to shoot his or her picture. They may have something on their mind that you aren't aware of. If he or she is distracted, rushed, just plain grumpy, unhappy with the way they look or feel, or simply wants to walk away, let them. You can't force good photography. Try again another time. Have patience; it will happen, and when it does and you capture great, relaxed and natural images of your child, you will be glad you had the self-control to wait.