On photographing babies
Dec. 19th, 2004 11:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mmcirvinA while back I posted a few pictures I took in Richmond of my niece, Greta. Those were the good ones of the bunch—a little blurry, but relatively well-composed and they showed her off to good effect (it helped that she's such a cute baby). Most of the rest I took weren't very good, and on the same day my mother (who, I'll admit, has more of an artistic eye than I'll ever have) took just a few photos of Greta, all of which were far better than mine.
I think I figured out what I got wrong. For most of my pictures, I used the same approach to photographing babies that I use with cats, applying![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kerri9494's dictum of getting down on the floor and pushing in close. The problem is that, while this works all right with toddlers, little newborn babies don't photograph well that way. They already look like they've got some sort of strange lens distortion applied to them, and anything that serves to further enlarge their heads relative to their bodies will just make them look like bizarre alien creatures. You're better off taking full-length, narrower-angle portraits from further away.
I think I figured out what I got wrong. For most of my pictures, I used the same approach to photographing babies that I use with cats, applying
kerri9494's dictum of getting down on the floor and pushing in close. The problem is that, while this works all right with toddlers, little newborn babies don't photograph well that way. They already look like they've got some sort of strange lens distortion applied to them, and anything that serves to further enlarge their heads relative to their bodies will just make them look like bizarre alien creatures. You're better off taking full-length, narrower-angle portraits from further away.