From the course: Kids Photography: At Home

Final outside shots of the family in their environment

From the course: Kids Photography: At Home

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Final outside shots of the family in their environment

- So let's just have you guys sneak up, and I'm gonna say instead of everyone just facing forward, Dana I'm gonna have you sit a little bit more to the side just to make it more interesting, and he can even straddle and face you. We wanted to do one more attempt at that family shot. So using the stairs, I had Roberto sit with Leo and sort of hold on to him while I positioned Dana off to the side, to enhance the composition a little bit. Rather than having everyone facing directly forward. I also wanted to make sure my settings were spot on, since I knew I'd have only one change at this shot once everybody was situated. So my ISO was at 500, I had my shutter speed at 1/320 of a second and then I also opened up my aperture to a 4.0 ensuring everyone was in focus in case there were moving arms, legs. You never know with little kids. The moment was over before we knew it. Luckily I was able to get 10 frames in that time frame, and a few of those worked out perfectly. After that, I did try to move in a little closer to grab a different angle but Marco was done at that point so that one didn't work out quite as well. At this point in the shoot Marco was getting ready for bed so Dana took him inside and I knew this was the chance to have Leo with the chickens and let them run through the yard. We started out the shoot with having Leo hug the chickens, just sorta get used to them and do a little interaction. This is where I made sure to squat down very low to him so I could be at the same level and not shoot from above so I could get his natural expressions as well. I noticed this setup brought the most natural smile from Leo. I loved how he hugged the chicken and just had that glow about him. It's really about capturing what children like to do and their enjoyment in doing so. After that we let it loose and said "Go chase the chickens" and captured him running around, arms and legs flailing and the chickens running through the yard as well. Noting that this would be a very active shoot in setup, I decided to bump up my shutter speed 1/500 sec to freeze Leo as he was running around with the chickens. Arms, legs, everything. You can get a lot of motion blur if your shutter speed isn't fast enough. You can even go as high as you want but I felt that that was appropriate for the speed he was going. (foreign language) Once we decided the chickens had enough of being chased and Leo was no longer interested, we decided to head inside and watch the interaction between Leo and his brother Marco with their bedtime routine and his bath in the evening.

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