Our children seem to grow up far too fast these days, and we treasure memories of their childhood... looking at photographs, smiling at the fun we had and remembering the laughter.

A professional photographer can get a beautiful candid portrait outdoors or in the studio. There is a tremendous difference between that and a snap and I've heard so many people say "oh, we go there all the time and can never get a picture like that!"

Well, at the risk of losing business, I'll try and help you to get better photographs of your children here!

Posed or Natural?

There will almost always be an element of posing, but you need to try and make it as relaxed and natural as possible.

Give the child something to do... perhaps flying a kite or sitting on a swing. If you have several children and you want a photograph of them all together, they will obviously be more posed than natural... so have them sit in the branches of a low tree (if it is safe for them), or have them build a sandcastle, or lay across each other, anything but standing straight up and formal. They get bored so quickly and it will show in the photograph.

Allow them to express themselves naturally and have fun, and you will end up with a much better result. Even if they do have to have their faces washed and hair brushed first!!

Focal Length

Often, you will get the best natural expressions if you use a long lens. The child doesn't know when the shutter is being fired and feels more relaxed. Another advantage is that it helps throw the background out of focus, bringing more attention to the child's face and expression.

Alternatively, you can experiment with short, wide angle lenses. These will distort features, making feet or hands, or noses much bigger than normal. If your child has a sense of humour and loves the quirky look, then play with the wide angles and have fun.

Aperture

Aperture is the size of the hole that allows light to enter through the lens to hit your sensor or film. Measured in f numbers, wide apertures have low numbers (e.g. f/6 and below) and small apertures have high numbers (e.g. f/12 and above).

If you have a point & shoot camera with pre-programmed settings, you can choose the settings to give you roughly the apertures you want.

If it is a portrait of your child that you want, a wide aperture will give best results. The background will be out of focus so distractions are minimised and all the attention is drawn to your child. With a point & shoot type camera, try either the portrait setting, or, if your child is running about, try the sports or action program setting.

If you want the landscape or background to be clearly in focus, then you will need a smaller aperture. This can be achieved by selecting the landscape setting on a point & shoot camera, but be very careful to make sure your child is in the focus lock position through the viewfinder or on the LCD before pressing the shutter all the way.

(You will usually have a black square or circle to tell you where the camera is focusing. Position it so that it is directly over your child's face, press the shutter half way to focus and, if necessary, move the camera back so that you have a lovely picture with everything you want in the frame. You can then press the shutter all the way and take your photo).

Shutter Speed

You will generally need a fast shutter speed to avoid blurring as your child won't keep a position for very long.

If you have a point & shoot type camera, the sports or action program setting will be perfect.

ISO

Iso is a measure of sensitivity to light. The higher the iso number, the more sensitive your camera is to light and so less time is needed for the shutter to be open.

It's rather like looking at the sea in bright sunlight. If you don't have sunglasses on then you can't look at the sea for more than a fraction of a fraction of a second without it hurting your eyes. Putting sunglasses on allows you to look for longer. If you have very dark sunglasses on, then you can look at the bright sea for even longer.

If the iso is a high number (say 800 or above), the sensor or film is extremely sensitive to the light (it hasn't got it's sunglasses on!!). If the shutter is open for too long, you will burn out any detail and your photo will be over-exposed.

Reduce the iso and you are putting virtual sunglasses over your film or sensor. You can then use a slower shutter speed without burning out the image.

OK, so what does all that have to do with child portrait photography?

Well, we've already said that we need a fast shutter speed. If your child is moving, and they almost certainly will be unless they are asleep or in a chair, then you need to freeze the movement to prevent blurring. This is why you need a fast shutter speed. If the shutter is open for more than a fraction of a second, the camera will record all the movement that happens during that time. This will just come out on the image as a blur.

Right, so we need a fast shutter speed, but where does the iso come in again?

Even if the light is very bright, and your aperture is nice and wide to let in lots of light, you still might be getting blurred shots if your child is running around or is perhaps riding their bike, or on a swing, whatever. Increasing the iso will give you a faster shutter speed so that you can freeze the movement and get a lovely sharp image with a blurred background.

A point & shoot won't allow you to change the iso, it will do it automatically. You have no control over what it chooses and it doesn't always get it right! If you want to take more control, stop taking snaps and start taking photographs, check out my hub which dslr? for more advice.

Lighting

You may not have a set of studio lights at your disposal, but there are still plenty of ways to get well-lit, balanced shots.

Natural light is lovely and soft when diffused through trees or a thin layer of cloud. The best time of day is either early morning, or late afternoon / early evening when the sun is lower and not so harsh.

If you are out at mid-day though, perhaps at the beach or on a picnic, and you have no shade or thin cloud to soften the sun, there are still things you can do.

Try and keep the sun behind or to the side and behind your child, then use the camera flash to fill in the light from the front and avoid a dark silhouette. This will also have the happy result that the sun will light your child's hair from behind, and also they won't be squinting into the sun!

Your pop-up flash can be quite harsh though, so you may need to move back a bit further, or, if you can pop the flash up before it fires, try taping some white tissue across it to soften the light. This will help to avoid strong shadows and burned out highlights across the face or shoulders.

If you have a hotshoe flash attachment, then you can build a home-made diffuser for your flashgun using opaque packing material or something similar. If that sounds too complicated, you can buy affordable ready-made diffusers that fit over the flashgun. Gary Fong diffusers are excellent and available through Ebay or Amazon.

A diffuser makes a tremendous difference to your portraits and I strongly recommend looking into your options, whether you go home-made or buy one.

If you don't have a flash, or the flash is too harsh, try using a reflector to bounce the light from behind your child back up in front of them. You can use anything from a board covered in scrunched up and opened out again aluminium foil, to a white sheet, or even a white t-shirt. Just be careful to keep your reflector just out of shot!

I hope you have found this hub useful, and I hope you have fun trying out some of these tips. At the end of the day, it's about capturing your child's laughter and love of life and creating memories. Don't let technique get in the way of that... if all you get is a snap, it will always be a treasured one and is far better than a poor portrait with good technique but a bored and fractious child!

Let me know if I can help with any more tips or advice, enjoy your photography,

Aunty.