Photographing children: creating a calm background

I love to shoot pictures of my children and with newborns it's so easy (they don't run around! ;-) ). I wanted to share a few easy tips with you on how to improve your photos. Just simple things that doesn't require special equipment or skills.



I want to begin with talking about the importance of the background. As fun as it can be to see your piles of clothes, toys, furniture and cats in the background, it's most of the time disturbing your eye. A calm, simple background help us focus on the motif in the photo: the baby/child.

Do you want to know how I created this green background?

I put a blanket on our bed.

It's as simple as that :-)

You can try with different kinds of sheets, fabric, curtains, blankets etc. White is classic. Try pastels, patterns, gray, neons - It's fun, easy and inexpensive to play with backgrounds. Use what you have at home.

Don't put the baby too close to the background, as you'll see all wrinkles etc on the fabric/blanket then. I shot with f/5 to make the background even more blurry, but if you've got a more simple camera you can see if you have a portrait setting on it (use to look like a head). Focus on the eyes to make them the most sharp part of the photo - you want to draw the attention to the eyes, as that's where people naturally look when they meet someone or see a photo of a person.

This is what it looked like "behind the scenes":