Babies are one of the photographers’ bogeymen: photographing babies and being able to take decent shots is particularly complicated and complex. And not so much for the difficulty of the subject, as for the attitude of the latter towards photographs in general. Take infants for example: being able to get their attention is a challenge, as is keeping a child’s attention for more than a few seconds. In any case, there are always solutions, or ways to achieve your goal: take pictures of children. Here are 13 tips for photographing newborn babies that may come in handy.
Photograph when the child is happy
Children make few requests, but those they do are important: mainly food and sleep. If you want to photograph a child at best, try to concentrate your photographs after just a nap or baby food. Normally, in the hour following sleep or food, infants will be more relaxed, much more likely to smile and therefore excellent photographic subjects. In the same way, children just awake in the morning are much more active and well-disposed a situation that tends to worsen with the passage of time: in the evening it is much more likely that the newborn is difficult to manage with difficulty in finding a good shot or simply a nice pose of the same.
Photographing in infants – be patient
Babies able to stand alone on their arms are probably the best subject: these are subjects that are not yet able to escape from it and with extraordinary facial expressions. The children who start to lift their heads express amazement, surprise, effort, effort but also joy and many small smiles. An infinite amount of expressions to choose from. Obviously being able to take a photograph as we would like it to be takes time and a lot of patience: hurrying a newborn baby is not possible, just as it makes no sense to fix the pose itself. Wait for the baby to settle on his own and capture the best moments of the discovery of his motor skills.
Do not use the flash
It seems obvious, in retrospect, but often you don’t think about it when shooting: the flash is not a good thing, especially if you don’t have an external drive. Aside from the problem that photos taken with the flash are too hard and flat, the flash scares children. Eva Marcille Impresses Fans With This No-Filter Photo: “This World Owes Me Nothing”. Always try to use fixed or natural light sources (a window but also the light of a lamp). In case you are forced to use the Flash, have a diffuser to make the light as soft as possible. In the case of an external flash, aim it upwards so as to use the ceiling of the room as a reflector and obtain an optimal light distribution effect. Another very important option is to use the flash remotely.
Photographing newborn babies – Mom and Dad
It is essential, when photographing newborns, that mom or dad are close at hand. This will keep children comfortable. Place the parents (if you are not one of them) behind you and ask them to draw the child’s attention with fools, noises, sounds … in short, anything that can help the child look in your direction.
Kat Irving is a reporter for Diving Daily. After graduating from NYU with a master degree in history, Kat got an internship at WABC-TV New York and worked on profiling local businesses. Kat was also was a columnist for the NPR. Kat mostly covers business and community events here at Diving Daily
