How to shoot children's vitality and emotion

As children grow up, their reactions to things will be different. Generally speaking, children 0.5- 1 year-old mainly rely on sounds (such as rattles, small horns or the barking of cats and dogs) to attract their attention and make them happy.

For 1-4-year-old children, they are no longer interested in all kinds of good sounds. What attracts them and makes them happy is playing games (such as throwing balls at each other or playing roles with puppet gloves, deliberately making a fool of themselves in front of children, and so on). ), and put down the shelf as an elder or parent, in order to win the trust of children and relax their vigilance, so as to capture vivid and interesting shots.

Children aged 5- 10 are determined subjectively, and they are dismissive of deliberately exaggerating and pretending to make a fool of themselves, which may show contempt. The best way to deal with them is to have a cordial and sincere conversation with them. Moreover, in the conversation, he said some stupid things that were contrary to the facts, which made him feel ridiculous. When they show a well-meaning mocking smile, it is often the best time to press the shutter.

2. Long-distance tracking method

If you have a telephoto lens with a long focal length, you can make full use of the advantages of this equipment to track and shoot children at a long distance. If you take pictures in the park, you can hide yourself in trees and flowers, only revealing the camera lens, so that children will not notice that they are taking pictures and their expressions will relax. Naturally, once you find an interesting scene from the picture, you can take a snapshot. It should be noted that the telephoto lens with long focal length is bulky, and the slow shutter speed will often cause jitter, so it is best to choose a shutter speed above 1/ s when shooting.

take sb by surprise

In daily shooting, we often encounter such a situation. The child had a good time, but once the camera was aimed at him, his expression immediately became dull and embarrassed. To overcome this shortcoming, we can adopt a surprise method. The specific way is to pretend to be indifferent to the child's every move, and at the same time, don't aim the camera at him. In the dark, the distance is set by visual inspection, and the aperture and shutter speed are set according to the light and environment of the shooting scene. When a shot that can be shot is found, the shot is immediately conveyed to the subject, so that the eyes are quick, the heart is quick, and the hands are quick, and the beautiful moment is decisively shot into the shot. Like Color Picture 6, Innocent, it is an award-winning work of the World Photography Competition. The author successfully captured the children's wonderful expressions and left an unforgettable impression.

4. draw the tiger away from the mountain

There is a saying called "Tong Yan, June day, change when you say it." In fact, for some children who are sensitive to reactions, sometimes it is even difficult to capture his or her fleeting best performance. In this case, if there is a helper, you can consider using "transfer the tiger in the mountain". That is, let the "helper" talk to the child or play games with him (her), do everything possible to attract the child's attention and forget that there is a camera aimed at him (her) nearby. At this time, when shooting, you can concentrate on all the preparations. Press the shutter as soon as you find the child's wonderful expression.

5. Quick attack method

So you don't have to point the viewfinder directly at the child. But aim at the target by the angle of the camera lens. The best shooting distance is 3 -5 meters. Do a good job of distance calibration by visual inspection, try to choose a smaller aperture, and make full use of hyperfocal distance to make up for the unclear phenomenon that may be caused by inaccurate ranging. Shutter speed can be greater than 1/ s, so as to avoid the defect of blurred picture. The key to shooting in this way is that the photographer will not be too vigilant and can take a satisfactory shot quickly when he is unprepared. Because you use your hands instead of your eyes, the photos taken by the fast-break method are not the same as expected, and there are often shortcomings in composition and framing, but these can be corrected by the later stage of the photos.

6. Wait for work.

Before shooting, choose the scene, set up the camera, get ready, and then wait patiently for the children to enter the shooting range, often capturing the ideal shooting lens.

7. Cooling method

For some naughty children, sometimes they earnestly advise him to stand in the camera, and he will not do so. This is to make sure not to worry, but to treat him coldly and deliberately ignore him. Children are most afraid of being left out and will take the initiative to talk to photographers. You can take a snapshot of him when he approaches the photographer actively.

8. Let it run its course

Sometimes I meet some particularly timid children, and once they are not properly guided, they will make him sulk or cry with a straight face. In this case, the most common reaction of parents is to hide the camera. Because people are often used to thinking that it is a good shot for children to smile when taking pictures, otherwise it seems that they will not show their liveliness and cuteness. In fact, this is not absolute. Because photography is an art, art pays attention to beauty. The true goodness is beauty. As long as it is the expression of true feelings, other expressions of children, such as anger, surprise, curiosity, surprise, injustice and even crying, are of aesthetic value and can enter the camera. Therefore, if a child cries while taking pictures, you can just take pictures of him crying or angry, which is realistic and can be kept as a souvenir in the future.

9. Follow photography

The children are very active and full of energy. A healthy child seldom stays still for a few seconds in his life. However, there are also touching childish interests in sports. How to take a good picture of the children in the activity, so that the image is clear and dynamic? It is a good method to follow the shooting method.

Follow-up photography mainly relies on the strong contrast between the virtual movement of the background and the clarity of the subject to express the movement. In order to better emphasize this contrast and strong sense of movement, we should choose a dark and chaotic background, such as trees, people, dark buildings and so on. In this way, when the rotating camera follows the shooting, fuzzy lines will appear in the background, which is in sharp contrast with the bright and clear shooting subject. Side light and background light should be used in the light, so that the moving subject can get a distinct outline line, which is not easy to blend with the background color, which is more conducive to highlighting the subject.

10. continuous photography

The so-called continuous photography refers to a series of close-up and existing photos taken through the continuation of shooting time. In children's photography, continuous photography can vividly and systematically record the whole process of children's activities, especially to show children's emotional changes step by step and portray children's expressions in detail. The photos taken by the successful continuous shooting method are profound in expression and strong in appeal, which is often incomparable to a single photo.

Although it is difficult to take continuous photos of children's daily life, parents have some unique advantages in taking photos for their children. The problem is how to use them. For example, at a child's birthday party, you can film the arrival, activities, games and farewell of the child. Take one photo for each activity and arrange it in chronological order, which becomes a series of photos of children's birthdays. You can also take a series of photos quickly in the middle, such as putting on birthday cakes, cutting cakes and sharing them. In daily life, there are many such opportunities. The continuous photos of children's innocent joy, anger and fear can simply constitute a complete and wonderful fairy tale world. As long as you are good at observing and adopting different shooting techniques (such as teasing, waiting, following and snapping), you will get a complete and wonderful story in the fairy tale world.