Taking Photos of Children

Children are of course always a favorite subject for photography, particularly for the parents of young children. The great thing about taking photographs of children is that they’re completely unselfconscious models. On the other hand, they’re rarely doing the same thing for very long, so speed and multiple frames are of the essence if you want to capture a good shoot.

The best advice for taking photographs of children is this: get down to their level. A very common mistake of amateur photographers is to only ever take photos from their own eye level. This leaves subjects such as children and pets looking very small and lost in the frame. Taking a photo from around the child’s eye level shows them in their world, which is how you should always take an environmental portrait (this is essentially what every photo of a child is).

Point and shoot cameras often have a mode for children or portraits (they won’t differ much, so either is fine), and this can be used as a convenient option. If you are using a DSLR and want to control the process, try using aperture-priority mode and a fairly large aperture, like f/4 or f/5.6. This should give you a fast shutter speed of 1/100 or greater (enough to freeze subject motion). If it doesn’t, you can increase the ISO to 400, 800 or even 1600 – these will yield perfectly acceptable results on almost all modern DSLRs, and environmental portraits are more forgiving of slightly noisier photos anyway.

Along with traditional portraits, children at play are also a popular subject. For this, again get down low to the child’s level, but use a wider focal length (50mm or less) and show the activity that the child is engaged in. As for all people photography, look for moments of emotion such as joy and surprise.Having children is a great excuse for owning multiple cameras: a DSLR for quality, speed and ease of control; and a point-and-shoot camera for those unexpected moments when you don’t have a larger camera with you. Your children will thank you for it one day!