How to photograph your children & find your photographic voice.
/I photograph a lot of families! And most of them LOVE taking photos of their own activities and adventures :)
But sometimes it’s hard to know how to get motivated to take pictures, or how to even TAKE a good picture. Photographing your kids can be difficult for lots of reasons, but most of those are solvable!
So here I’m offering a few tips that help me when I’m in a big slump.
Take your camera and go for a spring walk!
The best way to get out of a photo slump is to FORCE yourself to take photos.
Setting off for our regular March walks down our rural road.
Every spring, my youngest kiddo - 11 year old Raynor - makes us go for walks along the road, to check on the culverts that have started to overflow from the melting snows.
In March and April, this is the funnest activity for him! Checking those culverts and ditches, the speeding waters in some parts, and the still waters in others.
Occasionally, we find frogs in there. Frogs that have overwintered and somehow are still surviving. It’s too early for frogs! It’s still fairly freezing out there, and yet occasionally - we find them!
Last year, we found these really cool underwater creatures that create shells out of whatever they find. (I later googled it, and found out they’re Caddisfly larvae)
It was strange, because the first of these underwater “bugs” had a blue shell - obviously it had upcycled some blue bit of plastic or aluminum it had found in that ditch. So cool!
So while we go on these walks, I often bring my camera.
The best way to get photos of your family is to take your camera with you wherever you go!
I often have to remind myself of this, because during the cold winter months when I’m hunkering down and doing all sorts of cosy winter activities like putting together jigsaw puzzles and playing video games… I don’t even think about taking photographs.
But when spring comes, something in me awakens.
Don’t be always asking everyone to smile
I think I’m preaching to the choir here a little, because I know you all enjoy and treasure real moments, but…
When photographing your kiddos, it’s important to let go of the expectations for perfection.
They don’t need to be smiling at you in every photograph.
You don’t need to have them fully visible and perfectly composed in every shot.
Let them lead. Let them do what they want to do, and just be on standby.
If they are goofy, silly, make funny faces, hop like a bunny, smell their feet: take that photo!
This is how you can preserve little bits of your children’s personalities that you’ll all enjoy revisiting for decades to come!
The other thing is - don’t expect them to dress a certain way, or have clean faces for the photo. Maybe they just ate yogurt and had a little smear leftover on their cheek? Maybe they have mismatched socks… Maybe something else not “perfect” happened.
Every time you correct your children on how to BE, before you take a photo, you’re actually telling them that there is only ONE perfect way to be. But we all know that is not true!
You don’t want to be putting up hurdles and barriers to your children being photographed. Ideally, it should feel spontaneous!
Being silly on camera! These are wonderful moments of your kid’s personality that you will want to capture.
Don’t be afraid to chase the moment!
This is the most helpful tip for me. It’s what makes people tell me that they can “relive the moment” in my photographs of their children.
I’m always “chasing the moment”.
What that means is that I am ready to go wherever I need to go - low down on the ground, or high up… or just waist level. It really doesn’t matter. The camera has to be READY in your hands.
If your kiddo(s) run, you run along! If they sit to play, you sit and photograph. It’s a lightning-fast mirroring action that gets you right where you need to be, all the time.
PLUS, when you do this often enough, the kids learn to ignore you. Or even better - they WANT to invite you in on their play. But as an observer (because you can never truly get what their make-believe games are all about, right? Wink, wink. It’s not like you were ever a kid once! haha.)
And don’t be afraid of the imperfect photo.
It’s ok if you chopped off a head or a foot when you took the photo. It happens. When you’re chasing the action, there’s little time for a perfect composition. And that is OKAY.
It’s a bit of a tradeoff, sometimes. You either chase perfect composition and risk losing authenticity & emotion…
Or you start to get over the need to be perfect in your compositions, and take risks with the shots.
Anticipate the moment
Okay, I know this sounds like it goes completely against the bit above about chasing the moment.
But it’s actually two sides of the same coin.
Sometime you identify something cool your kid is doing. But you miss it the first time. Hey, it happens. (All the time!)
Maybe they’re jumping off a big rock, and it takes you ten or twelve such jumps to get the right shot.
Often, your kiddos will keep repeating this fun activity you’re photographing, without instruction from you.
Occasionally, they won’t clue in that you find this super fascinating, so why not give them a little nudge? “That looks so cool! I almost got the shot I wanted. Maybe next time!”
And they keep jumping and jumping.
Above is a series of photographs from three winters ago, back in 2019. After our March walk, Raynor took fifteen minutes to jump off a big wood stump in our front yard. I kept taking photo after photo, because I was trying to get THE shot. And in the end, I finally got the one I was looking for. 👇
Why is this one the one?
Because for me, it reached what I call the peak moment.
It had the heightened emotion I was looking for, and even though you cannot see his arms, I think this is a stronger photograph than any of the others above.
But you can be the judge of that.
And who’s to say you will agree?
Photography can be really fun like that: what I see and look for in a photograph won’t be the same as what you see :) And that’s ok.
This is all part of the process of learning your photographic voice.
Have FUN & Don’t take yourself too seriously!
It’s okay to strive for strong, emotional photographs of your children, and at the same time have lots of fun.
Sometimes if you’re too hard on yourself, you’ll see the entire set of images as a failure. Believe me, I’ve been there.
But let time pass you by, and revisit them. You’ll be surprised at some of the treasures you see in there.
Above anything else, let this be a fun thing you do with your children. The moment it loses its magic for you, it’s ok to put the camera down.
We got stuck in the mud and even though he wanted me to help him out, I kept shooting (for a bit…then I helped him out :P)
Happy Photographing!