Children are fascinating creatures to capture with photography. In fact, I’m willing to bet photographing your children is what brought many readers to Your Photo Tips. When you start thinking about the importance of creating an archive of your family history through visual interpretation learning how to take better pictures is simply a must!

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 smaller than adults (my wife calls me Captain Obvious sometimes) so you’ll need to get down to their eye level. This will help keep your child’s body in the right proportions avoiding 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. Kiddos 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. That works best for my kiddo.

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.

Photograph by myself

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