Ways to get the best photos of Children

Children can feel one of two ways about the person who always chases them around with the camera at family parties: they can love feeling like the star, strike poses, and fake-smile all day long, or they can avoid eye contact, scream, and/or plop on their bottoms and pout. As a mainly family and portrait photographer during my early years, I got to see some of the extreme children from each category, and let me tell you, neither are any fun. Through all of my photo shoots with children from 3 days to 16 years old, I developed some techniques and styles that help me capture their best moments when they least expect it...all without creating any "enemies" or getting suckered into taking hundreds of photos of "drama queen" poses.

The first thing I learned (and this might actually apply through their teenage years), is not to tell them what to do. I know, you might be thinking, "then how will I ever get a nice picture of them smiling and looking?" Well, my answer to that is that nobody really likes looking at those photos besides maybe the mom or the grandma! Besides, as long as your child goes to school they're guaranteed one yearbook photo per year. What people want to see is your child running, playing, laughing...they want to see the energy and life...the personality. It's very rare to capture a child's personality while they're staring straight at the black machine in your hands while you tell them to smile for no reason at all. The photo above was taken after I had told "Susie" we were done taking pictures for the day. She skipped off to her mom's van, so happy to be done, and when she looked back to see what was taking everyone else so long, I caught my favorite photo from the shoot.

Another trick, besides just letting your child be themselves and being ready to capture their essence in a brief look, is to wait until they're distracted. In the photo above, this little "Becka" wouldn't smile no matter what I tried. Finally, her older sister came over and started making funny faces, and "Becka" started to smile! My point here is not to say that you need funny faces or noises to get good photos of your kids. My point is that your child doesn't have to be looking at the camera for the shot to be beautiful! (If you don't think this shot is beautiful, then disregard this tip...) The photo below of the twins has the same concept. The fact that they aren't looking at me doesn't take anything away from the photo, if anything, it adds more interest. What do you think they were looking at? And do you think their thoughts were the same? We'll never know!

Like the first photo, the one below is of a tired little girl who is sick of her parents telling her to smile and to put this funny wreath on her head. Both of these shots are two of my favorites, and what do you know, they aren't even smiling! My next tip when shooting children is to not delete any photos. Computer hard drives and external hard drives are so inexpensive that there is almost no excuse for not saving every single picture you take of your children. They grow up fast (I know I did all of a sudden), and soon enough they'll be getting married! You're going to want a lot of photos to choose from when you're planning their embarrassing photo slideshow from birth til that very special day! Even the "bad" photos, if there is such a thing, are worth keeping. They will want to look back and see what they looked like when they pouted for not getting to play the arcade game they wanted or when they fell and got hurt. It may sound strange, but, for me at least, photos  serve more than the purpose of just being pretty. They help you remember the way things were.

My next tidbit of advice for shooting children is to not get too close. There are plenty of good photos to be taken from a distance, when they don't even know you're doing it. These two kids were at a wedding, and as you can see, were getting a little bored by the "adult" things going on inside. Even though you can't see the expressions on their faces, you can read their body positions and guess at their movements. Again, it's not always about getting them smiling, but instead, getting them being themselves.

My last tip of the day, is not to focus on getting one particular shot. Keep your mind open. The photo below was one in a series of a bajillion of little "Tommy" and his sisters. He was whiny and fidgety and the girls were getting annoyed and it was showing on their faces. I sat down in front of the bench and gave a huge sigh. "Tommy" thought it was hysterical and made this face...

Priceless! So, as I was saying, if you're trying to take a photo of all of your children together and for some reason its not working, but one of your kids looks better than usual, don't pass up the opportunity! If I hadn't realized how great a shot this would make, I would have missed out and still not have a decent shot of any of them.

If I were you, and had children or siblings that I wanted good photos of, I'd have my camera with me all the time. No matter where we were going...even if its just the weekly trip to the grocery store. Just remember, when they're older, they'll look through them all, and they'll show their boyfriends, girlfriends, fiancées, husband or wife... So don't do it for you, do it for them!

Don't forget the main points!

Don't tell them to smile, sit, stand, anything...

Wait til they're distracted and not looking

Try shooting from a distance

Don't close your mind to other possible photos

Take photos of the good times, the bad times, and the plain ol' regular times

DON'T DELETE ANYTHING.