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

Background Color

My mission was to take the photos of the baby. I was neither thinking much on how to position the baby, nor the kind of background that best bring out the baby.

I was tired of squating down to shoot the baby. Since the light from the windows was shinning at the sofa (gave me fast enough shutter speed), and I would be able to sit down on the floor to shoot the baby, I get the baby up to the sofa. The baby can roll around the sofa comfortably without worrying knocking his head on the floor. Of course, I am guarding the edge of the sofa to prevent the baby from falling down straight to the floor.

After shooting and checking on the photos, I noticed that the sofa background color was pretty good in bringing out the color of the baby's skin. He was fair, and the background was dark. The contrast made the baby outstanding. Hmm... the baby looked good with dark brown background.

I was shooting at f1.8 at 50mm. It helped to create the depth of field isolating the baby, emphasizing the baby while de-emphasizing the foreground (seat cushion in front of the baby) and background (back cushion behind the baby).


Album: http://picasaweb.google.com/kcshashin/BabyShots25Dec2008