Picture This~ by Dorine Pederzani: Child Photography

Isabela is your typical three year old little girl whose room is full with stuff animals, bright colors and toys everywhere. And just like many little three year old girls, sometimes they want their picture taken and sometimes they don't. Today, Isabela really didn't want her picture taken, but we persevered through and got a few cute shots, with mother's help of course. But in this blog, I'll also show you the pictures no photographer wants to show their potential clients.

First we start by combing the hair and getting dressed for our photo shoot. Isabela didn't appreciate that too much so we start with glum poses. What do you do when a child doesn't want to cooperate? You change the scenery, we went outdoors.

Outside was a little better but also full of more distractions! Like the family dog, voices of other children playing, wet soggy chairs, that I was planning on using for some cute shots. Somehow I made it work and got Isabela to dance and smile...but it was a fading few moments.

Ask any photograher and they will tell you, to capture wonderful images, the trick is to limit the relationship between the subject to camera, in other words have your subject looking elsewhere than into the camera all the time. Of course looking at any one object all the time isn't good either, and that's was the difficulty I had with Isabela who looked at her mother constantly. It did bring big smiles which is by far better than frowns.

Our short photography shoot went through the movements as a concerto, from a slow first movement, into a lively second, then quietly back to the beginning to create the final third movement that brings us to the end of our story.

I love photographing children because they are so unemcumbered and transparent with their emotions and reactions. Photographing them can be challenging, but so rewarding for the few good images you get. With children using lots of props is helpful although not always necessary, patience is what is necessary, without patience you should rethink photographing children.