Photographing Kids: Finding Good Locations

Video Transcript

"Sometimes when I am on location or you know even outside the house, I will take a look around at some good opportunities for great pictures. This is one of my favorites; it happens to be right behind my house. But I have a really nice mutual wall here and kids look great in front of it because it is a very simple background. I usually bring my little crate with me, but you can use anything, a little stool or something and you keep it comfortable. Here Ricky do you want to sit on this pillow? To keep it comfortable for the kid, I might put the pillow down for him and then cover up my unattractive crate. Go ahead and sit down sweety. And then I have, I really just set up a wonderful composition here. It looks fantastic, I got wonderful light coming in and I am all set I can take lots of great pictures. So we got our nice little set up here and I am going to bring out my handy bed sheet again and I will use this to just add a little bit more light reflecting up into Ricky's face. And I love to have what I call my little bag of tricks. I always bring it on shoots. Hopefully it is toys that the child isn't familiar with, it kinds of catches their attention and you can either use, there is two ways you can use it. You can give it to him as a prop to hold on to. I might be cute if you are telling a story or may be it is Fall and you want to use a football and if they don't want that toy, then you might surprise them with something else, like this. Who is this Ricky? Who is this? Who is it? Tiger! It is a tiger, what does a tiger say? Raww! So now I got a great natural reaction from the child, he is excited, I got that wonderful natural smile and it is fantastic. So we've already got our little set up here with the sheet reflector and Ricky in front of the really nice neutral background and I am going to get his attention with one of his favorite toys. Do you love the football? Yeah. Do you like the football? Do you, do you? Yeah, do you, yeah? Would you like to hold it? All that is great Ricky and I go ahead and grab that picture. Ricky, hi, yeah and may be we will get a little smile. What is going on honey? Can you look at me? Look up at me, yeah. Aww that is a great picture. As you can see that this is a, we are just in a alley behind my house and it might not look like much but in this situation I got wonderful light, I am coming in really close on my subject and framing him really nicely and it going to be a great photograph."