Top 3 Tips on How to Photograph Toddlers
This post is specifically written for moms and dads who want to photograph their families at home but have a toddler that doesn’t easily cooperate. Here, I will present our Top 3 Tips on How to Photograph Toddlers. This is also written for those parents who don’t mind that the child is being “relaxed” in the photo and not necessarily looking at the camera and smiling. For portraiture, parents expect the child to act and utilize social and adult cues: sit and stare at the camera with a generated smile.
So they end up bargaining with the child, giving them treats, telling jokes, singing, etc. For our family, all those tactics can become a bit tedious. I suspect that this notion of beautiful family portraiture (kid staring at the camera and smiling) was handed down to us from the European Renaissance. Where children and families were painted in a flawless and statuesque manner.
In photography, I’ve heard this a million times from parents: “Ebony doesn’t look at the camera and smile – she always makes silly faces,” or “she cries, throws a temper tantrum.” In some cases, my photographer colleagues can relate: if a child refuses to smile, when the photographs are delivered – the parent unconsciously and sometimes consciously associates the child’s lack of a smile, a “weird smile,” or funny and playful face with the photographer. “Did you not see Ebony wasn’t smiling?’ Or “didn’t you see that she was making a funny face?” or “Ebony’s smile is too big or too small.” The truth is, we photographers don’t know how you the parent would like Ebony’s face to look. With that said, here are our top 3 tips on how to photograph toddlers.
Family Photography in Harrisburg
1. PARENT’S MINDSET
Parents should understand that there are other alternatives to simply sitting and staring at the camera with a smile. The old model is to view a beautiful family portrait as when the child staring at the camera and saying “cheese.” Now if your child is anything like mine: rambunctious, bold, a toddler, charismatic, and energetic. Then you will know that getting them to sit still and look at the camera 9/10 of the times is next to impossible. So how about we try something different? That is, to build the photograph around the child by making the process fun for them. What I have found is that for most people, their goals with taking a photograph are for one of two reasons or both.
1. To use the photo as a historical record to communicate: we looked like “this” at this point and time in history.
2. To share the photos with friends and family via social media, Christmas cards, albums, digital slide shows, wall prints, etc.
If sharing is the case, parents, consider this: if your child is making a funny face or doing something “silly” in the photograph, who is really going to make a negative comment about that child? The point I am making is, nearly everyone viewing the photograph will chuckle and respond with some variation of “they are so cute.” This is a similar approach and philosophy that we have adopted in our wedding photography with both adults and children. Authenticity is beautiful. There is nothing more beautiful than real life and real people being themselves.
2. GIVE THE CHILD SOMETHING FUN TO DO
Now that we decided to allow the child to be a child and we are comfortable with it, the next thing we have to do is give them something fun to do. With our child, that has ranged from throwing keys on the ground and letting her dive for them to letting her jump off of a couch, etc. Whatever you know that will be fun for your child, we suggest you let them do it.
3. SHOOT RAPIDLY AND PICK THE BEST ONE
This is more of a technical rule that photographers use in their workflow. I’ll tell you in on a little secret about professional photography. We don’t take just one, we take many, sometimes hundreds of photos and pick the best one. There I said it, I let one of our professional secrets out the bag. Take many, then pick the best one and discard the rest. And finally, print it. Don’t let it sit on your phone, dying computer’s hard drive, or camera…print it!
Finally, with this style of photography, we cannot convince parents who love posed portraits that they can adopt this mindset. This is specifically written for parents who are comfortable with and don’t mind their child having fun in the family photo. The key is to remember to make it fun, keep it light, and take plenty of photographs, then choose the best one. Studies show that children who see their photographs printed and hanging on the wall in their homes have higher self-esteem than those that don’t.
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