Three Steps to Natural Toddler Photography

Natural-looking toddler portraits are hard to capture for several reasons: they are very close to the ground, move unreliably, and don’t often happily sit still. We tackle the first of these issues in this post as we discuss tips on improving your toddler photography skills.

Three Ways to Improve Your Toddler Photography

Go outside – Morning is the best time for toddler photography because sunlight comes in at an angle, and they are generally in an amicable mood (which is why we don’t suggest late afternoon/evenings, when the light is equally good). When choosing a shoot location, think about what will reflect light in your surrounding. Concrete is a great reflector, and what we used in this shoot. I like the neutral tones of concrete, as you don’t have color cast on the skin which you can get on grassy surfaces. Being outside also gives you more room to move around with the camera, instead of being confined to certain angles due to space constraints. We used our nifty-fifty for this shoot, and I love the clarity of the pictures.

Get to their level – The most successful shoots we take of CZ involve one of us crouched / laying down, following her with the camera, while the other one makes sure she doesn’t hurt herself (or more likely eat something most grown people wouldn’t even touch). Kneeling down can also be an effective way to place the lens at eye level and capture her whole face and expressions.

Let them pose themselves – I love photographing CZ as she explores her surroundings.  We tried placing her in a chair or corner where the lighting was perfect, but she squirmed around and scampered off. In the end, finding a generally well lit area or space for her to run free produces the best facial expressions. Kids are cute on their own, and all you have to do is patiently keep the lens on them with your finger on the shutter. You will be surprised how often they will strike an adorable pose that you wouldn’t even know how to ask them to do!

We know that making the switch to manual settings is an incremental process, and a great place to start for toddler photography is choosing your own focus point.  Composition is more important that artistically perfect camera settings. Eventually, composing the shot becomes intuitive enough that you start to thinking about tweaking things like aperture, shutter speed, and ISO yourself.  For now, though take it easy, and focus on having fun capturing those precious moments.  The only thing you might consider changing is the max ISO your camera uses in Auto mode because higher ISO produces considerably more noise in the photos. Although, sometimes you might want that grainy, film look.

If you are interested in the specific aperture, shutter speed, and ISO settings that we use for toddler photography, click below to get access to our library of photo guides.