Getting the Smiles: Child Headshots and a Couple Family Portraits

Getting a natural-looking smile in a photo isn't always the easiest task. Just ask any parent! For this shoot, my client was specifically interested in getting nice portraits of each of the kids and wasn't worried about getting a family shot (even though we snagged a couple) or other group shots. That made my job a little less complicated, so we worked on the portraits first.

I have a couple tricks when I do portraits of kids. First of all, I like to let them help out as "photographer assistants" during the shoot: holding an umbrella or monopod, helping position people in a group shot, etc. When it's their turn to have their photo taken, I let the kids pick a spot where they want their picture taken. Then, I try to interact with them in an easy-going, no-pressue manner. For younger kids, I talk to them about school and favorite hobbies. For older kids, explaining how the camera functions really helps. I often show kids the back of the camera as I am taking pictures, especially if I need them to smile or look a certain way (or in the case of the little sister here--get back into the family shot!) There is nothing like immediate feedback to help a child understand what they are supposed to do.

I often have to educate my clients how to smile for the camera in a way that doesn't look fake. The easiest way I have found is to create real situations to get a real smile. For adults, conversation seems to work the best. We naturally smile as we talk, so I shoot and gab, two of my favorite things! For kids, saying words like "spaghetti" or "macaroni" or even "okay" work really well. Those words have an "ee" sound at the end and end in a smile anyway. If the child is having a good time, smiles aren't too hard to get! Finally, have someone else behind the camera (these kids' mom was fabulous!) talking to the kid and reminding them of their friends at school, favorite people, and other smiley thoughts. Enjoy!

Head Swapping

It's been a full week with my surgery and a sick baby on our hands. We've taken a break from photo shoots for the time being. However, we wanted to post a little about some of the work Jacob has done in his Special Edits work including head swapping. It's a little trick photographers use in post processing to get all the faces looking right. It takes some work, but the results are very nice.

First, you have to have two (or more) photos that you can use to form the composite. That's why I often take several shots of the same pose when I do group portraits (like this shot from a kids photo shoot earlier this summer). Obviously, the goal is to make sure all the people are looking at the camera and smiling at the same time without any help from photo editing. But when that doesn't work, I try to get at least a nice shot of each person looking and smiling at the camera in the same pose so we can "head swap" if we need to.

Here are the two photos Jacob used to create the composite above:

Good expressions on both of the little ones' faces, but not so good on the two oldest

Pleasant smiles on the two oldest, but "deer-in-the-headlights" look on the two youngest

Next, Jacob finds a place where he can swap one part of the image out for the other. Sometimes, head swapping is as easy as taking a head from one photo and putting it over the other photo, then blending the background to match. In this case, Jacob had to swap out whole bodies, so here's how he ended up editing these originals.


Put the two jigsaw pieces together and ta-da! After all that work, we had fun playing around a little with the color levels and added a bit of a vignette to the one at the top of the post. But the full color one below looks just as good, and hopefully doesn't draw any attention to the photo editing that was done to it.

Family Photo Shoot at Hembree Park

Saturday, we met a beautiful family at one of Roswell's smaller parks, Hembree Park. We found a lot of great places to shoot, though Jacob reminds me that he had to adapt the environment to make some shots look right. In fact, Jacob was very busy during the shoot: moving sticks and logs out of the stream, shifting a rather heavy garbage can out of the background, and keeping our little toddler happy while steadying me on the step ladder. Thank goodness for great assistants (and husbands)!

Our clients were great! Not only did they wear perfect clothes for the shoot (simple, similar outfits in neutral colors), but they also were easy to work with. Mom and Dad will be celebrating their anniversary this week. Happy Anniversary!

Their daughter impressed me with her self-confidence and outgoing personality. After getting the shots we wanted while she played her violin, I mentioned that she could stop. But the piece was nearly over and she finished with a flair! That's a true musician.

At home, I generally stick to the camera side of things while Jacob handles any special edits. But this time, I wanted a try at it. With a little guidance from Jacob, I added some subtle vignetting and adjusted the levels a bit on the first image of this post. I wanted to emphasize the family without compromising the other details of the stream and rock bed. Here's the original without the vignette. I think those changes made a big difference!

This is my last photo shoot post for a while. I will be taking a small "vacation" after an outpatient surgery this week. It will give me a chance to rest and prepare for the upcoming months before Christmas (typically very busy for photographers).

Swingin' and Readin'

A fellow blogger and photo enthusiast volunteered her kids to model for my Kids and Teens Project this week. We did a few photos in her backyard and then headed out to their subdivision's private park for a few more. I love Alpharetta! There's the greenway, beautiful parks, amazing trees, and wonderful hidden treasures like private community parks and ponds. Discovering these "secret gardens" is one of the highlights of being a photographer.

Big sister loves the monkey bars. She uses a mixture of sand and clay (fifth photo) to help her hands grip the bars more easily. And quite a grip she has! She hung on those monkey bars while mom put the two twin girls in a row. Then, they all held long enough for me to get several pictures of the siblings. I love how big brother is framed by the playground equipment.

Big brother prefers reading. He can read a thick book like Inkspell in two days. We got to talking books before we went to the park and found out we have a common interest in Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. I had no idea there were three more sequels to The Lightning Thief, and my reader dashed upstairs to get me the second book to borrow! I'm halfway through it already.

Lately I've been working on my posing techniques. It's something I think most parents want: a nice posed picture of all the kids looking and smiling at the camera. But it's not so easy to achieve. Mom and I posed the kids and even persuaded them to take off their shoes for the photo. Then, I told the two oldest to just look and smile for the camera while I worked on getting the two youngest to smile. (Older kids are great this way. They will usually go along with a plan, as long as they know the purpose.) Well, it turned out pretty well! I had the two youngest close their eyes and then on "3," look and smile at the camera. Snap, snap, snap! And we have all four of them looking and smiling. Great job, kids!

Do you have school-age kids who would like to model for me? You will get wonderful candid photos of your kids doing what they like best, and your kids will get some fun experience modeling. Please contact us to sign up for my Kids and Teens Photo Project which I've extended until the end of August.