Professional portrait photographers control every aspect of a formal session, including location, background, light, pose, expression, clothes and more. I like the results they get, but I can’t do that when I photograph my granddaughters. It’s never an actual “portrait session” anyway; more of a half-minute opportunity to grab a shot before they move on. Still, I’ve learned to control at least a couple of important elements, which I think of as being partly in control. Even that helps get a better result.
When I know I want to grab a photo of one or both of them, I quickly look for possible backgrounds and the best available light. I take an exposure reading and set aperture and shutter speed and approximate focus before asking them to “pose” for me. Then I call them over, take a few seconds to dial in settings more precisely, take a photo or two, and they’re gone.
By the way, I’m shooting black and white film, so I can’t look at the LCD screen to see if I got the shot or not. Sometimes I do, often I don’t.
One thing I don’t do is try to pose them. Even if I could get them to pose like I’m directing them to, the result would almost certainly be artifical and stiff. So I let them pose themselves. Sometimes that doesn’t work out, but on these two occasions it did.
I gave my younger granddaughter my film lab beanie and placed her in a shadow under the eaves of a building with a plain wooden wall. The pose and expression were hers. I couldn’t have done better.
I used the same approach for this one, but on a different day. Again, I quickly “scouted” the location and light, brought them over and got in two shots before they ran off. They posed themselves, and it worked out.
Maybe when they’re older I can do an actual portrait session where I control more of the aspects of taking their photo. Although, there’s no guarantee those shots will turn out better than these.
