I just finished four days of my annual preschool portraits. I'm exhausted! This year the school expanded to two sites, which meant twice as many days and kids! I need to recover and then get to all the images, but I wanted to start off with something a little different this year...
This first image is a finished product. This cute little 3 year old is tiny! She was so small that I had to have her sit on two books instead of one! She has such a beautiful smile, and she was all decked out in a pretty dress.
A few kids will sit in the chair and give me a nice smile right away. But for most kids, it takes some warming up. I usually say something or make funny faces and monkey noises to get them to smile naturally. Most kids are so trained to say “cheese” that I often have to un-train them on the spot. In this sequence, you can tell she was trying to smile for the camera, but it didn’t look natural. If my antics behind the camera don’t draw out a natural smile, I’ll play a little game of high five. In this case, I asked the girl to keep her right hand on the chair and then give me a high five with her left hand and then put it back on top of her right hand. I would then pretend that the high five hurt as I ran back to the camera. This usually brings out a smile, and in many cases, laughter. Timing is crucial, so it might take a few attempts, but when I can catch the right moment, the results are so nice.
Needless to say, I’m exhausted at the end of each session. This annual shoot is truly a labor of love for me. My body is slowing down, but the kids keep me coming back!
Here are a couple of shots of my very basic set up. I tried many different spots in the room and found this to be the most pleasing. I shot my 85mm at f/3.2, which gave me a nice shutter speed while keeping the kids in focus and the background soft. The Pottery Barn chair has been my most used photography prop! How do you like the matching book?
Anyway, thanks for looking.
Tim
EDIT: btw, don't mind the black light stand in the shot below. I should have removed it for this set up shot. I had it ready in case I wanted to add a boom and hold a reflector behind the chair, but I didn't need it. I did, however, use it at the other site since the light fall off at the other facility was more severe.
