It’s so wonderful to have such gorgeous sunny weather at the moment! The diary is packed full of returning clients and it’s amazing to see how much their kids have grown. Little Julia is just over a year old now; she was a newborn baby the first time I photographed her! Big brother has grown up now too and it’s fab to see them playing and running around their private Notting Hill gardens together. We were spoilt for choice with all the flowers, swings, climbing frames and benches which gave lots of variety for their family photos. I find being outdoors really helps bring kids out of themselves and encourage natural smiles and laughter. We did their photoshoot early one Sunday morning so we had the best light and the gardens all to ourselves.
Child photography - moving subjects!
Parents are often concerned that their kids won’t sit still for photos and that the photos will come out blurry. This is one of the big advantages that professional cameras have over iPhone cameras, in that it’s possible - with practice - to capture fast-moving subjects, even in low light or heavily backlit conditions. The real skill comes in making sure the child’s face and eyes are tack-sharp even if they are zipping backwards and forwards on a swing, or being flung in the air, whilst still having a nice soft, out-of-focus background. From a technical point of view, it’s essential to have what’s called a “fast” lens, that will track a moving subject, and change focus extremely quickly (here I have a 50mm f/1.8 Nikon lens on my camera). In addition, the shutter speed needs to be fast enough to “freeze” the action (usually anything above 1/500 - i.e. 1/500th of a second - should do it, depending on the activity). To create a soft, blurry background, the aperture of the lens needs to be pretty wide open. Say f/2.8 or less. However, the more shallow the depth of focus, the harder it is to make sure the eyes are in focus as the margin for error is much smaller! The photo of Julia on the swing was shot at f/2.8, 1/1250 second. Life was made easier here by the fact we had strong sunlight, which meant that the shutter speed could be nice and fast. Here's some of my favourite photos from their shoot!
