Photographing Babies – Zoom in

In my last post I talked about photographing children and gave a few tips for taking photos of babies.

After posting it I was scrolling back through some of my old photos from some shoots I’d done with children and was reminded of another technique that is especially effective when taking photos of young babies who can be difficult to photograph because they are too young to do much other than lay there with little expression on their faces (unless you’re lucky enough to capture the moment when they get gas which can look like a smile of course).

The technique that produced some of the shots with babies that I found most parents responded well to were those shots where I isolated just one part of the baby.

For example the photo to the left focuses in on this little boy’s feet. His parents loved this shot (and a series of others I took of his hands, ears, nose etc). They now hang as a series along their entrance hall in their home as an eye catching feature.

Zooming in on part of the whole accentuates the smallness and detail of their little body parts and is especially effective for very newborn babies.

To do this effectively it might be worth working with your digital camera in macro mode (or investing in a macro lens if you have a DSLR – I use this one on my Canon). It can also be very effective to play with the colors in these shots (black and white or sepia shots can accentuate the mood and emotion that little hands and feet evoke).
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