In motion
Portraits
Caroline Schmidt
An experienced family and children’s photographer, Caroline’s portraits and expertise is regularly published online and in magazines as well as shared during photography workshops. www.carolineannphotography.co.uk,Instagram: @carolineannphotography.
Capturing children
Children aren’t best known for staying still for long, following instructions nor giving genuine smiles to the camera on cue but, so long as you have this expectation, you’ll have the patience to capture great portraits. Children are meant to be free and playful, and when they’re enjoying themselves the picture-potential comes thick and fast – you just have to be ready to capture it. Having a good camera with fast and accurate autofocus, such as the Nikon D750 and Sony A7R III, will dramatically increase your chances of isolating those perfect expressions – the smallest of lags between pressing the shutter and the frame firing can result in a miss. Use continuous focusing mode so that the camera detects the subject’s movements and refocuses accordingly to keep the subject sharp. Combining this with back-button focus will give you more control over your focusing, too, and continuous burst mode will increase your chances of getting ‘the’ shot between acts of chaos. For your shutter speed, it’s best not to drop below 1/250sec-1/320sec so this may mean increasing your ISO to accommodate a smaller aperture like f/5.6; having more depth of field will give you more image space for a child to move in without falling out of focus. Ultimately, however, once you’ve mastered your techniques you can aim to shoot at wider apertures like f/1.4-f/2.5, whilst retaining focus on their eyes, for a beautiful balance of sharpness and blur that helps produce a better portrait.
Aside from the technicalities of photographing children, a lot of your best portraits come from controlling the chaos. Children love to play so encourage that by initiating games, but ensure it’s in an area with a clutter-free background and good lighting so that you can focus your attention on them. By setting the portraits up, you can try to predict their expressions and when you should start to fire your shutter. Don’t wait until you see the perfect portrait because that will be too late; begin firing frames when you think it’s on its way and don’t stop shooting until the moment passes completely, and somewhere in the middle you capture the unexpected.
Jordan Butters
A professional automotive photographer and dog owner, Jordan specialises in
