Avoiding Distractions When Photographing Children

Avoiding Distractions When Photographing Children
Hi, my name is Ed Cody and on behalf of ExpertVillage.com, I am going to talk to you a little bit about what makes a portrait not so pleasing and it is usually distractions in the background. A lot of times we are photographing our child and we are so just caught up with the emotion of how great it looks and how cute he is and how pretty and those curls and all of that stuff, we fail to look on the things that are going on behind them. Sometimes if we are out in the park, there will be some cars whizzing by or if we are down on our belly shooting up at them there will be telephone wires in the back or billboards. That is what we need to keep an eye for, not only are we trying to concentrate on our child and what they are doing. But we also need to look at what is behind them, what is going to be in the print, so that is why we try and look for a neutral area, something that has got some greenery behind them or some trees in the faraway distance, a meadow. In the backyard let’s try to not point it at the chain link fence or at the barbecue pit. Let’s move them over towards the garden where you have got something kind of neat in the backdrop and not something that is going to take your eye off of the child and start making you think “Now what is that behind his ear?” So always be careful when you are photographing your child, look beyond your child and see what is in that backdrop? What can I do? Can I move my angle? Should I move a little bit to the left? Should I move a little bit to the right? Doing that again will give you a much better portrait.