I’m kind of a romantic when it comes to photographing people.  I love to photograph couples in love (or even pretending to be in love for a photo shoot.)  I also love weddings and engagement shots.  But, when it comes to photographing children my fantasy of capturing those adorable, “AWWW” moments always crash with reality.  Children are really, really hard to photograph.  They are kind of like dogs…they don’t really like to look at the photographer through the camera.  They have a tendency to talk to you looking away.  Or they smile some kind of phony smile and you never really get a good photo of their personality.  Or…they wiggle and run and giggle so much that it’s just plain difficult to catch them.

Such was the case with two children that I (tried to) photograph this weekend.  The first little girl was about 4-5 and she was there to be photographed with her beautiful mom.  She was a wiggle worm.  She was also pretty typical.  She would pose for a while and then she wouldn’t want to do it anymore.  Then she would pose a little more.  Then she would run around and play.  Truthfully, this is the way it should be.  I’ve found that, like photographing anyone, I try to get a good repoire with children first.  Let them get a little comfortable with me without my camera to my face and get them to loosen up a little before I put the camera to my face.  Then, keep talking to them while snapping away.  I probably get maybe 1 good photo for every 10 that I take when I’m trying to catch a child’s personality.  The other thing is they get tired of posing for the camera really quickly, so the photographer has to be quick and the photographer has to let the child run and wiggle before trying to photograph them again.

This little gal had the most beautiful brown eyes and lovely, curly hair.  And…she was a pistol.  So, I was trying very hard to capture her personality along with trying to get her to look at the camera.  I probably took 40 photos of her and I kept about 6.  I like this one because she is looking right at my camera, it’s got that lovely curl covering her eye and she stopped for one second to think about an answer to a question I asked her.

Here she is again with her mom, sitting on the wing of an airplane.  This photo is cropped and doesn’t show them sitting on the wing.  I loved the original photo, but her little hands were moving and, unfortunately blurred.  Dang.  Anyway, this shows that even if you have one or two aspects of a photo that aren’t perfect, you can still crop a little to get a pretty decent shot.

Here is another little 10 year old child that I photographed.  She was there with her mother, but the mother was not one of the models.  This little gal was absolutely beautiful.  Her eyes were amazing and she had lovely blond hair.  She brought several lovely outfits with her which made her look like a catalog model.  She was just a beautiful little child.  However, I could not get a personality shot out of her.

She had this same smile in every one of her photos.  This is the closest I could get to a natural look and it’s only because her hair is blowing a little in the wind.  I’ve had this personality issue before with other little children around the age of 10-12.  Usually they are quite familiar with posing for photographs and they have probably been told all their lives that they have a beautiful smile, or wonderful eyes or how photographic they are.  They have learned to pose when a camera is in front of their face.  Their poses are lovely and perfect, but they never show personality.  I see that I have a lot of work to do with personal repoire with children this age and with lots of practice in front of photographers.

]]> http://sierrasprings.commanderdata.com/2009/02/25/photographing-children/feed/ 0 http://sierrasprings.commanderdata.com/2008/09/25/the-whole-shootin-match/ http://sierrasprings.commanderdata.com/2008/09/25/the-whole-shootin-match/#comments Thu, 25 Sep 2008 23:11:54 +0000 Karen Schmautz http://sierrasprings.commanderdata.com/?p=121 This is the entire shoot…in a nutshell.

I love animoto.com

So, as promised, here’s a couple shots of the models with the antique motorcycles and the hot car.  I love the bride shots on the motorcycles.  They were just so elegant and contrary.  It was a happy coincidence that we were at this park on the same day as a couple of antique motorcycle owners were there.  It was also most generous of the owners of these fabulous cycles,  to allow our models to use them as props.  (She shakes her head in amazement.)

I loved working with these models.  They were darling and wonderful and very professional.  Most of them worked on this photoshoot all day long and I did not hear any of them complain.  Troopers, all.

A local photographer (I’m sorry that I did not get his name) brought this wonderful Corvette out to the farm for us to use.  What could be better than good looking models and a hot car?  It was just such fun.

Now I am not a high fashion (or even low fashion) photographer, by any stretch of the imagination.  I am more of an old fashioned photographer, so the above photo is the kind of photo I like to take.  This gal had never modeled before, but she had the kind of fresh face and refreshingly innocent personality that really came out in her photos. I liked this model very much for her innocent qualities and she was a joy to work with

These next two gals had some modeling experience under their belts and we really didn’t have to tell them how to pose. Again, these gals were incredibly cooperative and very professional.  I learned a lot from their posing techniques. They did all the work, and i just made sure I had the proper exposure (which much to my horror, I found that I ruined many shots because I did not check my exposure enough…

Okay, so this is my attempt at high fashion photography. This beautiful gal came out in this outfit and I was put in charge of a small group of photographers, finding a location for her and helping the other photographers photograph her.  Luckily she was experienced with modeling and knew the best way to show off her outfit.  I spied this metal corrugated building and thought it would go well with her outfit.  She did the rest.  Although I prefer the softer look on my models, this was a fun exercise for me to be able to do a little edgier shot.  (The male photographers were all clamoring to get her photograph.)

My next post will have the shots with the beautiful black corvette and some of the models.

This workshop was lots of fun and Mark Behrens is already talking about his next workshop, which will probably be held in early November in Placer County.

…this time in Sacramento…actually it was just outside Elk Grove, but who’s counting?  (I love mixed metaphors).

I attended this session on Saturday with 40 eager, talented, friendly, portfolio building photographers and about 14 models, a family of 4, an engaged couple, two fashion designers, a hair-stylist and makeup artist, two modeling coaches and, of course, Mark (who is a very talented photographer and teacher.)  It was held on a large old farm that had lots of charm, barns, farm implements, old cars, etc.  The “Trash the Dress” session was held at Rancho Seco lake at the old Rancho Seco Nuclear facility.

The photo above is an old Chevy Pickup truck that was in one of the barns.  I saw the light on this and I fell in love with it.  Of course, the other photographers fell in love with the truck and the light, also.  So…I only got to photograph the young man you see below in this particular location.  Luckily there were lots of other locations to choose from.  This teenager was looking to boost his acting portfolio and he was a very sweet young man.

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The handsome young man you see below was as nice as he is handsome.  He was also a true gentleman and a delight to work with.  He told me that he was a singer and an actor.  I asked him what kind of photos he was looking for and he gave me a wonderful smile, and I began snapping away as he said, “They tell me I have enough photos of me smiling, so I need a few serious ones.”  So, I took a few serious ones, but honestly, I didn’t find any bad photos.  The camera obviously loves him.

I had so much fun and met so many wonderful photographers and lovely, and handsome young people wanting to beef up their portfolios.  I would highly recommend Mark Behren’s Portfolio Workshop…it’s hard work, but well worth the effort.  I haven’t had much time to go through my more than 700 photos of this event, but I’ll put up some of my best shots as the week goes on.