Portrait Photography: The Art of Photographing Children

Photographing children. is an art. You might be able to get a good result by simply pointing a camera at a child and tripping the shutter, but it's not a very repeatable way of going about it.

I have been photographing people and things since I was seven. I didn't turn pro until only 17 years ago when I was hired by a local photo studio. Until then I had never had the experience of photographing children and thought that I could never get myself to do the goofy things one must do to be able to get results every time out. So when my boss would do these crazy things I would just recede into my shell thinking - I can't do that!  . . . until "I" started photographing kids!

I found myself doing things I never dreamed of and enjoying every minute of it. I discovered that I had an innate talent for this genre of portraiture. It also has gone a long way with aiding the photographing of adults as well!

Simply put, it's the art of distraction. Keep a subject occupied and thinking of something "other" than having a camera pointed at them and you will get the best results. You can do things like, ask them about something you think or know that they like. If they're old enough, a complex math equation works wonders because they think you are crazy to even ask but moreover, they take great pride in being able to answer correctly and at that point they enjoy being able to showing off a little.

If the kids are a little rowdy I just let them blow off a little steam. The 2-5 year olds love running around in circles on the studio floor. I think it's because they've never seen a big white painted floor before, I dunno, whatever it is they just love doing that. And I let them.

If the parents are a bit controlling I figure out a very nice way of conveying to them that they should let me control the kids and that "whatever happens" is fine with me. I'm only interested in a good result and I'm very very patient. If the parents seem to be getting a little antsy for results and the kids start to feel this I just ask the parents to relax in the front room for a little bit. Then the kids are only having to deal with me. I'm like the easy going baby sitter at that point who let's them do almost whatever they like except that I trade off of that so I get them to behave for just a short time to get what I need. Perfect little angels.

Success, in the art of photographing children.

My Dad's First Camera

When my father was a kid, his hobby was photography. This is a story written by my father, Jay Martin, about his first camera.

My First Camera by Jay Martin

When I was 14 years old (1937), I bought my first camera. It was a Kodak fixed focus box camera that cost me $1.00 at the general store in Hardin, Kentucky, where you could also purchase smoked ham, feed, overalls, penny candy, and a suit of black clothes.

My camera used only Kodak Verichrome film. To get my pictures developed, I took the rolls back to the general store, and waited two weeks for printed pictures to come back. That was too long to wait. In Poplar Mechanics Magazine, I saw an ad by Central Camera Company in Chicago, who sold mail order. I ordered three bakelite trays, developer, fix, and paper, amber light, etc., and began developing and printing my own film.

To enlarge my pictures, I rigged up an enlarger utilizing my Kodak box camera for lense, attached beneath a large tin can I cut out at the bottom the size of the film. I cut a hole at top of can, where I inserted a light socket with an on and off switch to control exposure. and a slot between camera and can to slide my negatives through. I built a wood column with a wood table at base. It was always in focus. Every enlargement was the same size.

A couple of years later when I had more money, through Central Camera, I bought a Foth Derby camera with focal point F3.5 lense, One second to 500th of a second with delayed action shutter, for $11, that made my updated enlarger more sophisticated. .

In a time of horse and buggies, where most people in town happily had no electricity or running water, I found a modern breakthrough.

I still have a few pictures in my archives.

Digital Photography Workflow

Ask Photo Guy on workflow:

Digital image files are easy to create and just as easy to lose. Your memory card is not meant for permanent storage however for lots of people it is. Memory cards these days are very reliable but at the very least your images should be downloaded to a hard drive for permanent storage. Hard drives can fail so extra backup is needed.

I get a little nuts about backup of my images. My workflow is as follows:
1. Shoot.
2. Download to a computer hard drive. I use dedicated servers for my storage with many terrabytes of capacity.
3. Burn 2 dvd's of the original images prior to any editing.
4. Rename the images by appending descriptive text to the beginning of the filename without removing the number at the end.
5. Deleted the bad images from the hard drive.
6. Tweak the images so they will look their best.
7. Burn another set of dvd's of the now edited images.

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