Category: Family

When the subject is not aware of the camera (at least, at the moment when the photo is being taken), the resulting candid portrait is often much more alive and “real” than a posed one, although the latter is often better executed from a technical standpoint. Professional models are trained to take the full advantage of a posed photo shoot. They know exactly what poses, view angles, lighting, etc. work best for them and, most importantly, can consistently reproduce their best poses. On the other hand, candid portraits makes “mere mortals” equal to pros in some respect, since it is much easier to be relaxed and behave naturally if one is not aware of the camera. In this case ignorance is, indeed, bliss.

I find that one interesting exception is photographing small children if they genuinely like being photographed. My three-year-old daughter is like that (most of the time). Everything in her world, photography, is a game to her. When she asks me to take a picture of her, she is fully aware of it, but somehow remains completely relaxed and continues whatever she was doing without missing a bit – exactly as she was doing it a moment earlier. I think this is because it all part of playing: she would “pose” for the camera one instant, run over to see the picture on the LCD the next second, and grab a camera to take her own picture of something that entered her attention field the moment after that. Incidentally, just as my daughter does not discriminate between playing model or photographer, the subjects of her photos (taken with an indestructible toy camera) uniformly span the range from portraits of her mom and dad to closeups of parts of furniture and toys to stickers of “Frozen” characters attached to whatever happened to be within reach.

Another first ever Christmas project for our daughter – decorating a gingerbread house together. She was very excited to help, but it was time for bed before we could finish. Licking the icing off the fingers is, of course,  a big part of the experience at this age.

My wife and I took turns taking few candid shots of the house-building process. Our daughter is becoming an experienced model. She was fully aware of the camera, but it did not bother her. In fact, she seems to enjoy being photographed these days. As far as I see in other children, this willingness to pose and relaxed attitude in front of the camera will pass with age. Until it does, I am enjoying the fascinating opportunity to look through the lens at our little girl exploring the world.

This Christmas is the first that our three-year-old daughter is consciously enjoying. The anticipation, the gifts, the sweets, the lights – it’s all very real and exciting to her. However, I don’t think she believes in Santa Claus in the sense that it is a man who lands on the roof and leaves the presents. On Christmas day, we had a party with friends, were one of the friends in the Santa costume came in and gave gifts to the children. Our daughter usually shies away from Santa, but this time, she enjoyed the gifts so much that she ran over to give him a hug. I am sure she knew that it was a man in Santa’s costume, though.

What to tell kids about Santa Claus is not as clear-cut question. There is a fine line between magic of the season that can only be experienced in childhood and deliberate deception that can plant a seed of mistrust to the parents. I recently read a review of an out-of-print book by Margaret Mead, and anthropologist, who addressed this question more that fifty years ago. I am glad that my daughter is not attached to the idea of the “real” Santa Claus, but is really enjoying him as an element of the Holiday.

In terms of photography at the Christmas party, as planned, I took a group photo with the camera on a tripod and a self-timer and some candid shots of the kids using natural light and fast prime lenses (Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L USM and Canon EF 85mm f1.2L II USM) on a Canon EOS-1D X. Here is the most important adjustment that I had to make in order to achieve sharp focus since I started using these lenses, which produce ultra-shallow depth of field: it is not possible to pre-focus by half-pressing the shutter button and then re-composing the frame – the resulting slight change in the tilt of the camera results in an out-of-focus image. Instead, I place an autofocus point directly on the subject’s eye (the one closets to the camera, to be exact), take a shot and then adjust composition in post-processing by cropping.

Pamela Druckerman writes in her parenting book “Bringing Up Bébé” that delaying gratification is an important skill for children to learn. As any skill, it requires practice, and the initial attempts are not always successful.

Today, our three-year-old daughter helped us wrap Christmas presents for the first time in her life. Convincing her to stick to wrapping and not to start opening her own gifts was not easy, but she managed to wait until tomorrow and went to bed late at night, full of anticipation. It is fascinating to see her growing up everyday. I wonder which of her experiences will end up being formative for her later in life.

Here is my plan for taking pictures when we get together with our friends’ family this Christmas. I am going to keep photography somewhat low profile, without making a photo shoot instead of the dinner, although I received a specific request to bring the camera (which I take as a compliment).

The friends’ house has a lot of natural light, so I am going to shoot mostly without flash, using fast prime lenses (Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L USM and Canon EF 85mm f1.2L II USM) on my Canon EOS-1D X.

One thing that I want to take a bit more formally is a group photo. We’ll use it as an excuse to extract everybody from the table at some point. I am going to email the group picture to the friends the same day – instant gratification and ability to share it over social media is more important in situations like this than even qualify of the photo itself. This photo would also be a preview of more pictures to come over the next couple of days, when I have a chance to process them.

Besides the group photo, I am going to take some candid shots of the kids and perhaps a couple portraits of adults. I like to keep the camera handy during the party, but not spend all the time clicking away. Instead, I will do a couple of brief shooting “sessions”, when others have relaxed and are absorbed by conversation, games (in case of children), or whatever else they might be doing.

From experience, I know that the shallow depth of field of the f/1.2 lens will add an artistic quality to the portraits and will make them look less like snapshots.