Clay Blackmore - Top Ten Secrets for Perfect Baby & Child Portraits

CLAY BLACKMORE

This book is dedicated to Monte Zucker, Joe Zeltsman, Phillip Charis, and Paul Linwood Gittingsfour great friends, great cameramen, and great teachers. I admire their work, and I work to rise to their levels of achievement.

Photography copyright Clay Blackmore 2012 Design, Layout, and text copyright New York Institute of Photography 2012

All rights reserved. Copyright under Berne Copyright Convention, Universal Copyright Convention, and Pan-American Copyright Convention. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher.

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Cover and Interior Page Design by Keith Gallagher Editorial Writing by Sarah Van Arsdale NYIP Publisher: Jay Johnson NYIP Director: Chuck DeLaney

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for and is on file with the Publisher.

ISBN: 978-1-58115-994-3
Printed in China.

T his Everyday Photography Guide is all about my favorite saying, confidence is key. It certainly applies to photographing babies and children. By the time youre finished reading and working with this book, and learning all the tips and secrets professionals use to produce jaw-dropping portraits, youre going to feel more confident about creating great imagesall by yourself.

Confidence comes from success, and success comes from practice. Photography is like any other hobby or profession; to succeed requires practice and dedication. First, youll learn the basics of taking great baby and child photos. Youll start to understand lighting and posing your young subjects, and practicing all the techniques that are essentially secrets to parents, grandparents, guardians, and other non-professional photographers.

My mentor, Monte Zucker, went to his teacher once a week for ten years to learn how to properly pose and light his subjects. Monte became one of the best portrait photographers in the world, but he didnt get there accidentally.

A sheet of mirrored glass with nice smooth edges is a great way to make portraits of little children who cant walk yet. Theyre fascinated with their reflections, and in the adult world, mirrors never lay on the floor within crawling distance. Lets explore!

Id like you to practice the secrets of taking great baby and child photographs until your hands form unbreakable patterns. With practice, the how-to-take-a-good-photograph part of the process will become second nature to you.

And thats why youre here. Once the techniques become second nature to you, youll be free to concentrate on your subjects and their needs. Youll be free to build an emotional connection with babies and children as you photograph them. Thats the greatest secret there is to taking the best portraits and casual photographs.

The result of learning and practicing these secrets: your photographs will come from the heart, and your attention will be focused on creating warmth and strong connections with your adorable little subjects. Thats the alternative to constantly thinking about what you should be doing technically.

THE KEY PROCESS BEHIND THE SECRETS

Learn the basics.

Begin to practice the basics.

Practice until the techniques become second nature to you.

Practice until your hands know the techniques by heart.

Practice the Secrets as passionately as a doctor or a professional athlete practices their respective crafts.

Open your heart to your subjects; focus on making a strong emotional connection with them while taking their picture.

Yes, Ive repeated practice four times. On purpose!

Y ou may think that photography was invented just for the purpose of keeping memories of your own children and grandchildren, and youre right that this is likely the most important reason why you own a camera. And well be telling you how to take better portraits of those little darlings than youve ever thought possible.

By learning and practicing the techniques that Ive learned and practiced over the years as a professional portrait photographer, youll be joining the long line of child photographers who have brought their gifts to the world through their photographseven if you just take pictures of the children in your own family for pure enjoyment.

Photography has changed enormously since it was first invented. Today, its a process we take for granted: we can snap a picture and send it to the other side of the globe in seconds. But it wasnt always so easy, and photographing children wasnt always a happy event.

There are lots of reasons for making portraits in black and white rather than color. Sometimes its out of necessity, when your subjects are in colors that would distract from the photograph. But it also gives the portrait an older, classic feel and focuses attention on your subjects features.

Until 1839, when the daguerreotype was invented, capturing a persons likeness was a complicated, rare occurrence. Before that innovation, people who wanted to be commemorated in image had to pay a hefty price for an artist to paint their portrait. But with the daguerreotype, a whole new way of creating portraits came into being. Its a way that now seems clunky, drawn out, and expensive, but at the time it was remarkably simple and inexpensive.

One of the first types of child photography was something we find unspeakably eerie today: images of children who had just died. In the Victorian era, as photography was beginning to become popular, infant and child mortality rates were high, and post-mortem photography, especially of children, became the way that many people created a permanent memory of their lost children.