Photographing Kids: Supplies

Video Transcript

"Today I'm going to talk to you about what you should bring when you have an opportunity to shoot kids. Lets just say that your going to your son or daughter's birthday party or your friend's son or daughter's birthday party. Before you leave the house, you want to make sure you've got your camera; whether it's your more professional camera or your little point and shoot. Make sure you have charged the battery, that you have taken all the pictures off the camera that are on there so far and you have downloaded them and you have reformatted your disk, so now the memory card in your camera is fresh clean and ready to go. And you can also check the settings on your camera, so you can adjust whether you want them to be high resolution photographs or whether they are going to be just snapshots your just going to put on the web or something. So I have a little camera bag and this makes it very simple for me to remember everything that I need to bring. I'll usually load it with my camera. I also bring my video camera which by the way, takes really low resolution snapshots as well. I bring my chargers for my batteries and I will bring extra memory cards in case there is a problem so I always bring extras in case I fill up the one I have or it gets corrupted while I'm shooting. I also bring extra videotapes as well. I'm sort of always multitasking. And then when you get to the shoot there might be some things some opportunities that could present themselves. So if your at a birthday party and there is lots of kids running around, there is a great opportunity to get those kinds of shots and sometimes you want the kids to sit still. I tend to throw everything into a crate so I've got my camera bag all packed and charged everything is ready to go. And then I've got my crate and I go ahead and throw in my professional reflectors but you could throw a bed sheet in or whatever or maybe you are going over to your friends house and you know you can use something over there as a reflector. I bring things like you know tape. So if I wanted to set up a impromptu studio on site, I could tape my background onto the side of a garage. I like to bring little props and things for the kids because if you add this little happy headband, it gets all kinds of great reactions from the children and they have a great time. Or it's getting close to the holidays I actually have a bag of Santa hats if they celebrate Christmas. And little toys that would be appropriate if they ended up in the photograph. Or if they celebrate Hannakuh I bring this blue fabric it's the Hannakuh blue color, so I try to cover all my bases. And I even have the blue present for the kids to hold and run around with. So if your going to a place where you know there is going to be lots of children, you can pre-plan grab a few of these items that will really make some unique and interesting photographs while your there. And the great thing about putting things in a crate like this is sometimes kids like to buzz around, they don't hold very still so if you give them a place to sit, I'll just flip this crate over throw a pillow on it maybe throw this blue cloth over it so it gives the kids a place to sit. I sort of ground them in a spot that has great lighting and capture the moment. "