P#14 Q6: Can You Share Some of Your Child Photography Secrets?

The Early Bird

Vik Orenstein: There are a lot of "secrets" to child photography and some of them are mundane, but they're very important. Fortunately, some of them are really fun. I'll start with a mundane one and then I'll go to a fun one.

First and foremost, when you're taking photographs of children, don't take too long with the shoot. You have a small window of opportunity unless you are spending a half a day or a day with a child, which is a different story because then you're following them on their schedule.

If your subject is coming into your studio, or if you have them for an hour, don't expect to have the child be perky for the whole hour. You want to take advantage of those early minutes when you're novel and not boring.

I would say the best photographs in a studio situation or a limited time situation occur in those first ten or 20 minutes so don't take too long. Just pop off those shots and go with the flow.

The second one would be schedule around the child's naptime. Don't expect to get good pictures if the child is normally asleep at that time.

Keeping it Interesting

As far as the "fun" child photography secrets go, I would say one of my most important ones is putting a stuffed toy or a puppet on my head and then pretending to sneeze with a very big windup. I don't know why but even kids up to eight or nine will laugh at this.

The puppet's on my head, and I go, "Ah, aah, aaah chooo," let the puppet fall off of my head into my lap.

It's a simple little thing, but you can get away with that ten or twelve times in a row. They always think it's hilarious.

Audri Lanford: You do that early on?

Vik Orenstein: Yes, sometimes it's right away to get them focused on me. It's nice because if I'm playing with the puppet when I'm in that connecting phase before I go behind the camera, then the puppet goes from my hands to my head and we still get them looking right at the camera or at least in the direction of the camera.

Sometimes if things are going really, really well, I don't think of doing it until we're getting to that point where I'm trying to reign them back, get their attention back towards me because they're getting a little bored.

Another child photography secret would be the raisin in the pocket for little kids.

If you have a toddler, say a one or a two year old, and they're just running like crazy and you're not getting them on the sweet spot, you can slow them down by putting a raisin in their pocket because they'll dig it out. If they eat it, that's great, and if it's got fuzz on it and they throw it on the floor, that's okay too. It will stop them.

The other thing is the raisin pressed into the bottom of the foot. If they're really, really fast, they don't care about their pockets but if you stick a little raisin to the bottom of their foot and stick them on the sweet spot, then they're going to stop, react, go and see, "What is this and why did she do that to me?" sit down on their butt, pull the raisin off.

It gives you a lot more opportunity to catch them in the place where you want them.

To Conclude

It seems that the secrets to outstanding photographs are easy to master. Vik Orenstein tells us that timing, raisins and puppets all play a part. :-) It would seem that the key to great child photography is the right mixture of timing and entertainment.