• Try to get your child to smile or laugh (you might have to pull a funny face). This should make him or her laugh out loud and always makes for a great shot.
• Get down to the child’s level. Shoot from below his or her eye level and your shots will take on a different perspective, showing the world from the child’s point of view. Stand on a chair for great overhead shots and don’t forget about all the great details like painted noses, muddy boots or scratched knees!
• Pick simple clothes—lots of pattern can take attention away from your subject’s face. If there are one or more children, or you are doing a family portrait, consider wearing complementary colours.
• Use natural lighting wherever possible. If taking a photo of your child or kids indoors, turn off your flash, open all the blinds, and have them stand facing the light source. Even better, go outside. The best time to shoot is either early in the morning or two hours before sundown.
• On a sunny day use your flash—this will fill in the shadows under your subject’s eyes caused from bright sun light.
  

Great photo basics

• Don’t just capture special ocassions—take some photos of ordinary days and activities, like splashing in puddles or face painting.
• Take pictures of your child sleeping, reading, or otherwise absorbed. Those unposed photographs can be precious.
• When you’re taking photographs, joke around with the kids to keep them engaged. Photos of kids laughing can really capture their personalities.
• Get a great close-up by asking your child to sit on the floor, lean back on one hand and look up at the camera.
• If you’re taking a shot of an older child ask him or her not to blink while you count to 10—this makes eyes look sparkly. While you count, keep taking snaps.
• A clean and simple location is best. Cluttered, messy backgrounds will distract from the photograph of your child.
• Take some close-in head shots, even filling the frame with a child’s full face or even just his or her eyes. Pull back for some full-body shots as well.

Shooting different skin tones

• If you are shooting a group of children, or people with different skin tones, find an evenly lit location. The lighter the skin tone, the less light you need; the darker the skin tone, the more light you need. The ideal setting would be an overcast day (so there are no harsh shadows) and a mid-tone, simple background such as a stone wall or grass. This is especially important with darker skin—you don’t want the background to compete with the subject and a midtone background will help the camera “read” the skin’s actual colour more accurately.
• If you have a digital camera, read up on exposure compensation in your manual. This mode takes three consecutive images; one is slightly underexposed, one is taken at auto exposure and one is slightly over exposed. This gives you three images to choose from!

More than memories

• When you visit your child’s birth country, or if you revisit it when your child is older, take lots of photographs of all the places and people that your child has a connection to, the countryside, and ordinary street scenes.
• If you are adopting locally, take photographs of all the places and people your child has a connection to: the hospital he or she was born in, staff from the adoption agency, birth family, foster family, etcetera. If you lose contact with a person, or you move to another city or province, those photographs will be a wonderful and important way to illustrate your child’s story.

AFABC would like to thank Michele Dyson of Indigo Six Photography, and Pamela Westerman of Apsects Photography, for their input into this article. Both photographers are available to take family photograhs.

Indigo Six (Okanagan)

250-488-3349 or 250-486-1660
www.indigosixphoto.com

Aspects Photography (Lower Mainland)

604-862-3737
www.aspects.ca