Photographing Kids: Getting Creative

Video Transcript

"Now, a lot of times, I'll be looking at photographs that my friends are sending through the internet or sharing with me, and immediately a few things stand out as problems with the image or ways that they could have made this amazing picture with the opportunity that they had. Now, one thing that I often hear my friends say is, "Oh, I could have gotten this great picture, but I left my house without the camera!" or, "My battery wasn't charged" or "There wasn't enough room on my memory card." So, always , always bring your camera everywhere and have it ready to go. Number two is, you know it's Halloween right now, or whatever time of year, there is always some sort of event where you are taking pictures of your children. And I tend to get these photographs where I've got five kids lined up in a row and I just can't help but think of a mug shot. So, try to avoid that by getting your children off the wall. I know the kitchen, dining room wall or whatever is nice and plain and you can really capture those Halloween costumes or their Sunday best. But if you just sort of bring them out from the wall, two things will happen. One, when the flash goes off, there won't be that big shadow around them. And two, they can kind of interact and you'll have more opportunity to get more interesting photographs. Another thing that I've noticed, this happens a lot with sports photography. So you're at your child's soccer game, or baseball game or even their dance recital, and you're taking your picture from your seat, or your place in the stands and you've got this entire field going on. And you can't tell which picture is your child or if they are doing anything in particular. So think of these opportunities to tell a story by zooming in, getting closer and try to crop out all of this unnecessary information. Rule of thumb, really is, and this applies to a lot of things, but it's called KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid. Now, I usually drop off the stupid part and just keep it simple. But, keep that in mind when you are choosing your backgrounds or the areas that you are shooting. Try to crop in on what is important to telling the story of the picture. And get rid of al the other busy clutter in the background. You can close the distance if possible, leave your seat. Make sure it's ok ahead of time, but go ahead up to that stage and grab a few pictures of your daughter or your son and then go back and sit down. Another problem is, not really taking enough pictures. It's the digital age, so you really are unlimited with the number of pictures that you can take, so don't just snap one or two and give up, go ahead and snap a whole bunch. I know with my camera and a lot of the point and shoots, you can set it on this function where, I call it the fashion model shoot. It actually takes repeated pictures over and over and over again. So you can take four pictures in five seconds, so you can kind of catch them at the peak of their smile or when their eyes are open, so there's some great little tips for that. And that's basically it, just have your camera ready and try to use some of the other tips I've given you to make wonderful pictures. "