They are the most photographed subject in the world. They are cute, they are cuddly. Babies are a wonderful subject to capture, but require skill and patience taking a good photo.
Flaws to avoid with baby photography
- Their huge eyes are even more important than with photographing adults. Try to get those eyes sharp. Avoid red eyes by not using flash at all using lots of natural light when photographing by taking photos outdoors or nearby windows. You can try the red eye reduction function on your camera. If that doesn’t work well or not at all, an imaging tool on your computer is a rescue.
- Babies are quite unpredictable in their behaviour and motion blur can spoil the party.
Use a high iso speed, and a big aperture to freeze the moments. And take a lot of photos to choose the best and sharpest ones. Just throw the mediocre and bad photos away. - The background should be kept simple. Not cluttered with chairs, commonly very colorful baby toys, or other children running through the view. The surrounding is seldom important for a baby photo. Zoom in or get close. When using a wide angle lenses avoid distortion, unless you want to introduce that on purpose of course. Patterned or heavily colored clothing can distract from the baby’s face and eyes.
For the best photos, choose simple, light and solid-colored clothing. - Try to limit the range of colors on the photo.
- A special moment is lost before you know it. Have your camera ready.
- Remember that the sweet memory for you, and your relatives isn’t always interesting for outsiders. But with using oddities and extremes with photographing babies the photo may be very interesting for an even broader audience. It may even make a winner for a baby photo contest.
Get different
Some possibilities for oddities with baby photography are:
- Leaving parts out of the image. Don’t show the whole baby, but for example only her legs, or only his hands. This will evoke the unconscious though: hey, where is the rest? On the other hand it will place all the focus on that part of the body, what viewer might have overlooked.
- Not photographing the baby, but the colorful toys that make up the world of the baby.
- Show the world not from the perspective of an adult, but of the baby. Never was conscious of perspective on the world.
Photograph the baby assuming a strange pose.- Capture the baby showing an adult facial expression or behaviour. Hey, that’s odd, that doesn’t match what a viewers think of a baby.
- Use mirrors. More experimental could be an exploring baby crawling a mirror on the ground. Of course, be careful. Or even more extreme: rotating the resulting image.
If you are lucky enough to photograph identical twins you don’t even need the mirror to give the photo an unexpected edge. - Blurred backgrounds work really well with babies. Use a long lens with a big aperture, or blur the background afterwards with an imaging tool. It simplifies the surroundings. With young babies it even suggests the way they see the world.
Baby having fun in peculiar place.- Props. Even ordinary props can become very funny with a baby. Like a baby with big adult shoes, big sunglasses, or a funny shirt. You don’t have to go as far as Anne Geddes to make an interesting picture.
Try photographing from another angle. From above, from behind.- Do the opposite: don’t show the baby as a small creature, but as a giant.
- Show motion blur in the background with a sharply captured baby running around. Remember that a sharp face and eyes are important for a striking image. This will not be quite easy, but some luck, or some help from photo editing software will help.
Baby photos to the extreme
Show the extremes:
The miniature proportions of the baby. The wonderful tiny feet, the tiny fingers.
This is emphasized by comparing it to the proportions of the hand of the father or mother.
Heavily dirty because of partly failed food consumption.- Show the formidable softness of the sheets of the baby
- Capture the abundant emotions of the baby. Happiness, huge distress. Silly to sad, grouchy to mischievous.
- Don’t only get close. Get as close as your lens will allow. Do an extreme close up.