Child Photography at Its Best! Use Your Imagination

Most times, the average mom or dad opts for professional photographers when it comes to taking pictures. And these are good options. But for really extra-interesting photos, ones that take more than one "sitting", candid photos are best.

One of the best and most important things that you will ever learn about child photography is this: Let the child get dirty. We have all seen the photos of those spotless children who look like paid actors. Now, let your light shine and let those eyes shine. Let the kids get dirty. No one has to be perfect and no one has to be spotless.

Some of the best child-photography you will see are those pictures where the children are just being children.

This means, you take pictures of the child when they are happy, sad, when they are simply living life in their own way. Take pictures going to the doctor's office. Take more pictures inside the waiting room and in the second waiting room. Take pictures on the way to parades, at parades and in between the parades, in and out of costume, day and night. Just take pictures. The more pictures that you take the better chance you have of getting a winner. A winner is one picture that you just look at and go, ahhhh, what a beautiful picture. And that does not mean that the subject is perfect or fixed. But the beauty that I am speaking of is the beauty of something natural. And natural can be a child eating a peanut-butter sandwich and getting peanut butter and jelly all over their face, their hands and their clothing. Now that is a beautiful, natural picture, yet not many photo albums have that winner in there.

Everyone is so caught up in having everything perfect that they forget that natural is the most perfect that you can be or get. Be natural and let everyone else be natural. As I look through photo albums and see everyone dressed nice and behaving perfectly for the camera, the one picture that I prize the most is one of three children in a photo, one child has the watermelon, and the other two looking on, as all three got splashed with the watermelon juice as one child smashed his hand, accidentally into the big, juicy melon. Splattt! All the watermelon went up in the air and splashed everyone around. That is sheer perfection of being natural. And the look on everyone's face-joy, humor, fun, laughter.

So, get out the ice cream, and the watermelon; bring the cookies out and the little birds and insects, and everything else that is naturally joyful. And take the camera along. Take pictures at the picnics, and take pictures everywhere else that you never thought you should take pictures at.

So, let's get those kids dirty. Put those wash clothes away and start snapping pictures of what children really do look like.