P#14 Q7A: Can You Suggest One or Two Exercises Our Listeners Can Do to Improve Their Photography of Children?

Persistence Pays Off

Vik Orenstein: Many of your listeners probably aren't going to like what I recommend, but it's really, really going to make a huge difference in your photography of children. If you just take your camera, keep it in your hand all day long (or at least two or three hours) and walk around the house and just practice pulling a focus on anything and everything.

You don't have to bother a kid for this because they wouldn't hold still for it anyway. Just walk around and point and shoot, and point and shoot, and work on focusing because one of the things that will make the difference between an okay shot and a really brilliant shot is really good focus.

You always want the eyes to be the sharpest part of an image of the kid. That old saw about the eyes being the windows to the soul, it really is true.

Just walk around and practice focusing. It can be an inanimate object, it can be your cat, it can be your spouse, just plants in the garden -- anything.

Keep focusing until you can do it. Look at the results in your LCD monitor and make sure that you're getting your focus where you want it.

Get really, really comfortable with that autofocus setting and how it works.

While you're doing that, the emphasis should be on the focus, but also be paying attention to the light. You can take a stuffed toy or a doll or something with you and bring it up to a window and practice that side lighting that I talked about. Take the doll outside and get some of that open shade or the early evening or late afternoon images.

Just practice without pressure because you don't have the kid with you so you don't have to worry about hurrying up and getting the results.

You'll be amazed at, first of all, how hard it is to really pull a great focus and how quickly you can learn to do it.

Audri Lanford: Wow, that's a great exercise.

Vik Orenstein: Nobody is going to say, "Gee, I had a lot of fun doing that today," but it really will open up a whole new world for photography of children.

Audri Lanford: You feel like in three or four hours or a day you can really get to the point of pretty confident at focusing well?

Vik Orenstein: That's the first step. It's something that you have to learn by repetition. Get used to having that camera in your hand, get used to manipulating the autofocus and looking for gorgeous light.

Then you need to reinforce it. Don't let more than two days go by before you do it again. It doesn't have to be as long the subsequent times. It could be as little as twenty minutes. The first time, however, you have to do it to the point where your neurons are going, "Ah, not any more."

Audri Lanford: I'm going to try that. That's great.

Vik Orenstein: It works for me. I was always one who was more interested in the creative aspect than the technical aspect, so when I started noticing that I wasn't getting focus exactly where I wanted it in my photography of children, I was really frustrated but I just wasn't giving it the weight or the importance that it really has in my images.

When I finally said, "Okay, this is it. I'm going to learn how to focus. I'm going to have the focus perfect every time." That was what I did. That was how I trained all my photographers for years to learn how to focus.

In Closing

Focus may not be the most interesting or the most creative part of taking pictures, but it's critical if you want your pictures to really stand out.

According to Vik, practicing how to focus and learning the behaviors of different lighting is one of the best ways to improve your photography of children.