Photographing Babies and/or Animals
by William Lulow
I have written quite a bit about my technique when it comes to portraiture. I like to engage my subjects in conversation hopefully that will elicit from them expressions that would reveal them in a “happy” state or maybe even just “contentment.” When the photographer is one-on-one with a subject, this is easier to accomplish than with a group or with other types of “distractions” like cute babies or pets!
Photographing humans and animals together often makes for problems in portraiture. Since humans usually love their pets, they are usually paying more attention to them and trying to get their attention as well, rather than interacting with me or the camera. The problem is that whenever the pets look good the humans are looking at them or playing with them or something. Or, in the case of babies, adults are usually fawning over them and trying to get them to react.
The way I solve this problem is to separate the adults from the babies or animals. I tell the adult humans to pay attention to the camera and to always have their smiling faces on. This quickly eliminates the need to look for good expressions on the adults and lets you concentrate on the animal or baby. It’s still not foolproof, but it certainly makes it easier. Adults will probably be in a smiling mood because they are being photographed with their own kids and pets. So, the usual patter between me and my subjects here, changes a bit.
With babies, you also want the parents to pay attention to the camera and not the baby so that you can concentrate on being able to press the shutter when the baby has a good expression. It’s a little different type of portraiture because you are not looking to get an insightful portrait of the adults as much as you are trying to get a great shot of everyone.
Now one other caveat about doing these kinds of shoots is that babies and animals often have much more limited attention spans to sit for photographs. So, photographers need to be ready, all set up with lighting tests already completed and able to begin the shoot right away. The first time that an adult tells a pet to sit down or a baby to look at the camera, they will usually comply. By the third or fourth time, it may be a problem. I begin shooting right away while telling the parents to look at the camera ans smile. I’m not really looking for revealing expressions on the adults. My goal is to get a pleasing image of all subjects involved. The idea is to concentrate on the subjects that will be the hardest to shoot. That way, I’m almost sure to get a few images that are more than acceptable.
When I was shooting children for advertisements or when I had a booking to do just a portrait of a child, I would often tell the parent not to cancel the appointment if the child woke up cranky that morning or threw a tantrum before coming to the studio. I have seen many children come to the studio in a bad mood and once they see all the lights, the background and the camera equipment, have a total reversal in attitude. I have often had mother’s say, “Oh he was in such a bad mood this morning. What did you do to change his attitude?” More often than not, it’s just what happens when kids are brought to a new place with new surroundings. This is not always the case, but it has happened to me more often than not. This has led me to my technique of casting children who have a better attention span and are more cooperative when doing commercial shoots. My take is that most children are cute enough for photographs, so I’m not looking necessarily for a special “look” when I book kids. I’m more concerned about whether they will present any posing problems.
So, this is all my way of saying that when I concentrate on the children or the animals, I usually wind up with much better shots.
