Advice #18: Go to their natural environment
Portrait photography is of course not only about studio photos. You kan make just as good – and often even better – photos, if you take your camera outside or go to the home, where the children live. The child is more relaxed in it’s own home and you will be able to catch more [...]
Advice #17: Use props to relax the child
I often use props when making portraits of kids. It serves two different purposes. First of all it makes it possible to capture natural looking expressions full of curiosity, smiles and laughter that will end up as much more interesting and funny portraits than the traditional “still life” portrait . Second, it will make the [...]
Advice #16: Space matters
There are so many things to say about composition. One thing that I like to use is what’s usually called “negative space”. This can be achieved by many different approaches, but the simplest way to explain it is when your subject take up a relatively small part of the portrait and is looking either into [...]
Advice #15: Do a lot with less
If I could bring only one piece of equipment beside my camera, it would without doubt be my reflector. I use a reflector for all kinds of portraits – high key and low key studio portraits, and for natural light portraits indoor and outdoor. I think that I use it for 99 percent of my [...]
Advice #14: Learn to love clouds
Even without expensive light equipment you can make pro-quality portraits just by opening your front door and go outside. The garden is a very natural environment for child portraits and there’s actually nothing like a cloudy day to give you brilliant light for photography. Clouds work like a huge softbox in the sky, and gives [...]
Advice #13: Smiles are not required
It’s okay to smile in a portrait, but it’s certainly not required. You’re not making a toothpaste commercial. Most of my favorite portraits don’t have any smiles. Not because I prefer sad kids, but because this is how we usually look. Most of us don’t walk around smiling all the time. We have a natural [...]
Advice #12: Just add drama
If you want to make mommies cry and hug you and love you for the rest of their lives, just add drama to the portrait. This is a very personal opinion and a regular part of my work – and I can assure you, that a lot of mommies are loving me Movies are my [...]
Advice #11: Twist that camera
Don’t worry about skewed walls or floors and horizons not being even. You’re not a landscape photographer but a portrait photographer. If it looks good it’s okay, even if it makes that old landscape photographer gasp. Strange angles can add a lot of life and energy to a photo – especially on closeups.
Advice #10: Crop tight
Cropping a portrait is a difficult thing to do. We don’t want the leave out anything, so we tend to capture as much as possible. But the closer you get to the subject, the more intimate will it be. The closer you get on the face, the more dominating will the eyes and the mouth [...]
Advice #9: Don’t make them sit in a row
I have to be honest. I really hate group portraits. Two people are okay, but three siblings or all the kids with mom and dad is just one horrible subject. 5 people of different size, some of them photogenic, some of them not, dad a little annoyed and the little one crying, but they all [...]
Advice #8: Let the kids define some of the photos
Often the kids just have to sit down and look cute and will leave the rest to their parents and the photographer. It works most of the time, but some kids might be a little reluctant to do this portrait-thing. A great way to get their attention is to involve them even before they come. [...]
Advice #7: Whiten those teeth
Visible teeth are in no way required in a portrait in my opinion. My favorite portraits don’t even have smiles. But when the smiles are there, make sure they look as good as they can. Studio light reveals everything and the bright white background in a highkey portrait can make even the brightest smile look [...]
Advice #6: Ask the parents on skin retouching
My own personal opinion on cosmetic skin retouching is very clear. Transient flaws are removed. This includes for example sores, bruises and obvious pimples. Permanent features such as moles, scars and birthmarks are not removed. The latter may well be disguised a little, especially when high-contrast black and white images would make them more prominent [...]
Advice #5: Solve a problem – don’t create one
During the average portrait session I take something like 120 photos per child. When I have discarded all the test shots and obvious misses (closed eyes, weird expressions etc) I have something like 100 usable photos left. When I started making portraits my opinion was that the parents and children should make the selection between [...]
Advice #4: Look out for the small details before you take any photos
We don’t want to look at children with a booger under the nose, dirt in the creeks of the eyes or the mouth, or leftovers between the teeth. Even less do we want to look at it for decades on the wall. Most parents take care of these things before going to the photographer, but [...]
Advice #3: Get down on the knees
No, not the child. You! In most cases you want the camera to be at the same level as, or just a little above, the eyes of the child. In addition to making the expression more natural it’s also more relaxing for the child, if that stranger of a photographer is not staring down from [...]
Advice #2: Focus on the eyes
This advice ought to be basic knowledge, but every day I notice portraits that are out of focus. When you look at a portrait, the first thing you notice is the eyes. If the eyes are out of focus, the entire photo look out of focus. If the child don’t look straight at you with [...]
Advice #1: Time & Patience
Your most important tool, when making portraits of children, and probably anyone else, is also one of the tools not available in stores. Fortunately it’s free, but not necessarily easy to aquire. It’s “patience”. I know far too many photographers that think that they can shoot 20 portraits an hour. That’s wrong. Very wrong. For [...]
