From Top Down

Although I am not tall, standing among 2 years old kids made me feel tall. This posts a problem instantly for photoshooting. Shooting from my eye level down would make the kids look even shorter!


From the above photos, the kids' legs seem being shortened when shooting from top down. The kids' foreheads looked bigger than normal (nearer to the lens), and the legs look shorter than normal (further from the lens). This is especially obvious when the kids did not look at the camera. I can't expect kids to always lift up their heads and look at me...

After shooting a few shots from top down, I noticed that some shots turned out pretty okay. So I was thinking, it may be better to shoot the kids with them facing my camera. This would eliminate the big forehead problem. Another thing that I noticed is that, try not to shoot the whole legs. It helps to prevent the short looking illusion. Below are some of the photos for example.


Oh ya, try making the aperture as large as possible. The depth of field created will blur out the lower part of the kids, which somehow makes the photos look better.

Album: http://picasaweb.google.com/kcshashin/MothersAndKidsShots2May2010