My brother, because of my insistence on taking so many photographs, calls me “Markarazi”. I don’t mind it though, because I love photography and my son and my nephews make some great subjects.
Keeping a few simple tips in mind can greatly improve the pictures of your kids. Follow these and you’ll have people asking you where you got your pictures done. 
1. Get Up Close
Get your camera close to capture all of those little details like their fingers, toes, curls of hair and especially their eyes. Children change so fast, seemingly day to day sometimes, capturing these images will allow you to relive some of the warmest memories about your child. 
2. Get Far Away
Hey, I thought you said… If every picture you have of your child was taken from four feet away, you lose a bit of their relative size. So back up, way up if you have to and use your images to show how small they really are in proportion to the rest of this world we live in. 
3. Ditch the Posing
Kids don’t sit still for a damn thing let alone some of your camera shenanigans. So don’t make them. Let them do whatever they want and start taking pictures. There is something beautiful about catching them in those moments when they are just being themselves. 
4. Always Be Shooting
If you’re shooting with a film camera you can ignore this one and go back to churning butter. With digital cameras you can take a 1000 pictures at no real cost. So why not? You never know when you’ll catch that moment. This picture above, I shot 700 pictures that day and I caught this as the second to last shot. 
5. Don’t Always Shoot Them From The Front
To create some visual interest in your photographs, change the angle at which you photograph your kids. Take an image from behind them, it can help to place you in their shoes, see what they are seeing. Climb up on the jungle gym and shoot down on them. Whatever you choose, at least try it. You’ll quickly find that your photographs are much more interesting this way.
Tagged with: digital cameras • kids pictures • photography
January 23rd, 2010 at 2:21 am
Great tips, especially the one about forced posing.
My wife is a photographer and always says that the best pose is no pose!
February 12th, 2010 at 10:13 pm
[...] from the site and a poorly-lit picture of the actual product received by my wife (I should reread Mark’s post on taking good [...]