A Perfect Start

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Canon EOS 5D Mk III – 70-200mm f2.8 – 1/100s f/3.2 ISO 200 – Chiara and Olivier on the 2nd January, wandering in the streets of Barcelonnette. First picture of both of them this year – and very likely one of the last where they are both facing me smiling, without moving.

First let me wish everyone a great 2014, a photogenic year full of wonderful shots. I wish we had good excuses for the lack of activity in the past 3 months – but unfortunately nothing less boring than crawling under lot’s of work and very few photo opportunities. Surprisingly the backlog of pictures to go through increased – even so we took very few pictures in the past two months of the year.

So moving backward from January 2014 – we spent a surprisingly warm week in Le Sauze for Chiara skiing debuts – a stressful moment (this is skiing we are talking about here !) she passed with flying colours, showing resilience, envy and perseverance. Olivier was un-impressed by the snow however, and Chiara ended up spending more time on the skis than anyone else during the week !

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Canon EOS 5D Mk III – 70-200mm f2.8 – f/3.2 ISO 200 – (left) Skiing under the snow at 9am in the morning, first blue run top to bottom. (right) She is too light and not strong enough to let the steel rope go – meaning trouble at arrival and when falling.

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Canon EOS 5D Mk III – 70-200mm f2.8 – 1/1000s at f/3.2 ISO 100 – Again in the morning cold, showing off her skills and balance.

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Canon EOS 5D Mk III – 70-200mm f2.8 – 1/80s at f/3.2 ISO 100 – Blue Olivier practising snow-walking. He does smile on this shot but this was uncommon unfortunately.

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Canon EOS 5D Mk III – 40mm f2.8 STM – 1/50s at f/2.8 ISO 100 – Olivier more confident opening up presents back in Marseille. This picture was a tight crop of a much larger picture (about 3 times the size).

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Canon EOS 5D Mk III – 40mm f2.8 STM – 1/200s at f/2.8 ISO 100 – The princess and her royal court. She does like to be the centre of attention and making her show.

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Squash, Mushroom, Carrot

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Canon EOS 5D Mk III – 70-200mm f2.8 – HDR at f/3.5 ISO 100 – Green leaves, falling sun. Autumn is upon us on this late Sunday evening. Probably a bit of a depressing shot …

We spend a few hours with the 70-200mm in Kew last week-end, a particularly mild and sunny day for October in London. There was a fake mushroom exposition, real squashes and fake carrots – not enough real stuff for a soup, but definitely fine for the kids to enjoy and run around.

All conditions were present for some nice portraits – and obviously our favourite lens did the rest of the magic.

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Canon EOS 5D Mk III – 70-200mm f2.8 – 1/640s at f/3.2 ISO 100 – Zoe, Maxime and Chiara. Sitting on the biggest specimen we found. I wish I could find one of those to carve for Halloween …

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Canon EOS 5D Mk III – 70-200mm f2.8 – 1/320s at f/3.2 ISO 200 – Olivier carrying the veggies for the soup. The pumpkin looks bigger than it was in reality and weighted much less than you could guess from Olivier’s face.

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Canon EOS 5D Mk III – 70-200mm f2.8 – Left, Chiara posing with her trophy. Right a natural cheeky smile from Olivier, sitting on a fake carrot.

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Canon EOS 5D Mk III – 70-200mm f2.8 – HDR at f/4 ISO 100 – Falling leaves, Kew Gardens typical benches.

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Canon EOS 5D Mk III – 70-200mm f2.8 – 1/160s at f/2.8 ISO 100 – Impromptu cuddle, it’s good to have a bigger sister …

Kid’s Photo Technique

Most if not all the pictures of kids posted on this blog rely on two techniques we use over and over to get them to smile at the camera. Olivier is too young to understand to smile at the camera, while Chiara would just play with faces most of the time – or put an unnatural smile at best …

Before explaining the two simple methods we use, below are examples of what clearly doesn’t work with a four year old girl (at least ours).

 

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Canon EOS 5D Mk III – 70-200mm f2.8 – 1/640s at f/3.5 ISO 100 – (From left to right). Initially I asked Chiara to smile nicely at the camera. For the second one I tried to pretend not to take picture – but she can put a face faster than me moving the camera to my eye (and I’m quick !). On the third one, I tried to promise a piece of Chocolate for a nice smile. On the last one I was probably telling her it was all a waste of time …

 

So to address this difficulties we have two tricks – each have their advantages and drawbacks.

1. The Surprise Shot. To get the best natural face, and smile – we found that there is less than a second between the time a kid move his/her head – or change eyes direction – and the natural look to fade off once he/she saw the camera. If you are positioned well enough – it can also mean the kid will be looking straight at the camera. So this is perfect for eye-contact style shots.

Technically it’s not the easiest as there is literally less and a second to take the picture and one need to be positioned correctly – so requires some patience. It’s also best to have a camera that have a very fast shutter speed and good reflexes.

Obviously the biggest drawback is that it only works with portraits of a single child !

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Canon EOS 5D Mk III – 24-70mm f2.8 – 1/800s at f/3.2 ISO 800 – On this picture one can believe he is smiling at the camera – not at all. In fact he kept smiling while turning around the tree, I just positioned myself to catch him when he would be making eye contact. The camera was set with a fast shutter speed. It’s also useful to have focus in manual to avoid risk of focus taking too much time …

 

2. The Distraction Shot. This one requires a third party, which would distract the kids – ideally making them smile. The biggest advantage is that it’s probably the only thing which work with “n” children. In this situation the kids usually keep their smile for a few seconds – so it’s easier not to miss the shot.

Apart from needing a clown, the smile is usually a bit forced and less natural – and children would generally not look at the camera. For multiple children, it’s also important to position them on a single line to all of them are in focus.

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Canon EOS 5D Mk III – 70-200mm f2.8 – 1/500s at f/3.5 ISO 100 – On this portrait by Sab, we put them on the same plan close to each other. They are also not smiling to help us – I was making the clown and funny faces behind …

So getting pretty faces is not only due to luck and number of pictures taken ! (although both help as well)