Photographing Your Child
It’s a day you’ve dreamt of for months. As you leave the hospital, you can’t believe that this little bundle is yours. You step into your home and it hits you, “What now?” You have so much to do, but at that moment all you want to do is lie down on your bed and stare at this beautiful little person who just changed your life. This is a moment that you want to remember forever. His little fingers and toes are the cutest things you’ve ever seen. His lips, his eyes, everything is so perfect! So you reach for your camera to capture this moment. It’s a picture you know you will look at over and over again, so you cross your fingers that it will turn out.
Don’t just cross your fingers! With these few tips, you can photograph your little one so that you can proudly share the pictures … with every person you encounter!
Photograph in natural light if possible - Today’s digital cameras are the best they’ve ever been, but if you want to avoid red-eye horrors (newborns are especially susceptible to red-eye) or the deer-in-the-headlights effect, turn that flash off and move close to a window. Whether you have a SLR (single lens reflex camera – the ones that have the separate lenses) or a point-and-shoot camera, turning off the flash is easy to do (through the menu) and will result in great quality images of a relaxed child with realistic skin tone and without red-eye.
Don’t be afraid to get close - You know you’ve seen it before – the pictures of a friend’s child where the child is so small in the picture that you can hardly make them out. Make the portrait all about your child and get in close to fill the frame, but be aware of the limits of your camera's autofocus. (Check the manual for the minimum distance that it can focus and don’t get any closer than that or you’ll have all artfully blurry pictures.)
Pre-focus on the eyes - Your newborn is a relatively easy subject when it comes to focusing. He isn’t crawling or walking yet, so focusing is easier than photographing a moving target - like a 3 year old. One thing to keep in mind is that whenever someone looks at a picture, their eyes are always drawn to the subject’s eyes first. If the eyes are in focus, we, as viewers, tend to feel more connected to the person in the picture. Be sure those eyes are in focus. I like to “pre-focus” on the eyes and then while still holding the shutter button halfway down, reposition the camera to frame the picture the way I want.
Capture a moment instead of creating one - When your little one starts to get older, the pictures you will love the most will be the ones that are expressive of who they are at that moment in their life. Including things like a favorite stuffed animal, favorite book, and a family heirloom blanket are meaningful and will illicit natural expressions effortlessly. Making your child still and say “cheese” will rarely enable the expression you’re hoping for and you’ll probably drive yourself nuts trying to get her to do exactly what you want. Instead, photograph her doing what she loves – laughing as your husband reads her favorite part in her favorite book.
Upgrade your point-and shoot camera to overcome “shutter delay.” - If you’ve ever taken a picture and looked on the back of the camera to see that you missed the moment by a fraction of a second, you are in good company. Most point-and-shoot cameras are not able to focus and take a picture within the fraction of the second that’s needed to capture your crawling toddler or your running 3 year old. This is called “shutter delay.” The solution? Pre-focusing can help if you’re able to do that with an active child, but the better option is to upgrade to a SLR. Most SLR’s have a better response time when you press that shutter button. A word of caution - be sure you have a chance to play with the camera you’re about to buy to be sure that’s the case. Not all SLR’s are created equally.
If all else fails, hire a professional - If you decide that portraits of your family are best left in the hands of the professionals (you can never seem to get you, your husband and your baby in a picture together), consider that this type of photography is an investment in your family’s history. Great portraits are truly priceless - that’s why photo albums are the first objects we grab when disaster strikes our homes. Start by choosing a photographer whose work you love. Take time to look through their website. Decide if you prefer at-home sessions or studio sessions. The best time to start documenting your little one is as soon as possible. Newborn photographs are best done in the first two weeks of life and if you’d like to start even earlier, having the photographer in the delivery room is an amazing way to capture the miracle of the birth in a tasteful, artistic and moving series of images. (Don’t dismiss the idea until you’ve seen how well it can be done!)
Your baby will change so quickly and you only have one chance to capture these moments, so it’s important to document him/her periodically every 3-4 months throughout the first 12 months and semi-annually or annually after that. With these few tips, hopefully the captured moments of your little one will turn out just as you had hoped and you begin to create a priceless documentary story of your newest addition.
