The Posing Playbook for Photographing Kids

Shoot 2

This photo shoot started in early morning light, but as the morning wore on, the sun became sharper and we finally needed to seek out a more shaded environment. The area we found was less than inspiring, but by utilizing a simple pose and maximizing the effects of a shallow depth of field, we were able to make this portrait work quite well.

We started by simply standing the boy apart from various background elements and using a small bounce of fill light from the reflector. But I found the background, with all that wood-chipped ground covering, to be too bland of an element to dominate so much of this portrait. So I plopped myself on the ground and invited him to do the same. To combat the blandness of the previous image, I positioned ...