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I had the amazing honour of taping a segment for CH Morning Live on photographing your kids outdoors! I brought my own little Luca and Isabella with me, as well as Isabella’s bestie Olivia and we headed down to Dundurn Castle to get some great shots! Here is a breakdown of the tips I talked about!
Tip 1: Find the light!
We met right before noon on a sunny day, which really doesn’t create the best lighting conditions for a portrait. Because the sun is directly overhead, it creates dark shadows and bright sun spots which can make it impossible to get a great photo. Also, your little subjects will most certainly be squinting for most of the time you’re hoping for a nice smile! Here’s Isabella and Olivia hamming it up for the CH cameras. You can see the bright spots on the girls’ faces coupled with dark shadows. Not a great spot for a portrait!

What I will do in a situation where I am shooting in midday sun, is find an area of open shade. The light in the shade is much softer, and your kids won’t be squinting and uncomfortable! We are under the shade from the castle in these next few shots:

Tip 2: Engage your Children in play
Getting children to sit still and smile for the camera can be challenging at times, and I actually rarely succeed with very posed shots with small children. What I do instead is engage them in play by coming up with a little game, setting up ring-around-the-rosie, or having kids go on a search for something. A popular game right now with my daughter and I is “fairy hunting”. I’ll take her to a location where i would like to shoot at and tell her to look for sparkles, or fairy dust. Her imagination runs wild and she begins to play a long which results in some animated facial expressions, and I get to capture her excitement. My camera is not the focus of our play, instead it’s tucked under my arm and I take shots while we are playing and having fun. This way I get to capture genuine moments!!
Here, Olivia is showing me a flower she found under the shade of a tree.

Watch CH morning live tomorrow to see segment 2!