Zach Smile
Written by Andi Watson on 21 May 2010
Props Are Good!
Written by Andi Watson on 21 May 2010
Last week I talked about how I try to inject some character and personality into my portraits, so this week I thought I would share one of the ways that I do that: using props!
There can be several benefits to using props in portraiture, and I'll show you some of my own photos as examples.
The first benefit to using a prop is that it acts as another point of interest in the photograph.
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These are a couple of photos of my son, Daniel. By getting Daniel to hold the sparkler we add another element to the portrait that makes things that bit more interesting.
As I was discussing last week, good portraiture is all about character and gaining a better understanding of the person in the photograph. Props can help us to do this - particularly when it comes to children.
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These portraits started to come alive when we added the girl's favourite soft toy. A prop is a way of letting the viewer into the subject's world, and it gives you a point of reference for what their personality is.
A prop doesn't just need to be an object that you interact with, it can also be something to wear. Everyone knows that kids love to dress up, so in these next portraits I gave the children super-hero costumes to wear.
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The costumes act as props that help to convey the personality of the kids. They add a sense of story, an extra layer, to the portraits. With the second of these two photographs, we can see that the costume is changing the behaviour of the child - he's running around like Super-Man - and so it helps us capture another side of his personality.
Another benefit to using props is that it gives the subject something to do. For shy, self-conscious adults, this gets them away from practicing their fake smiles and helps them to relax. For hyper-active kids it focuses their attention and hopefully keeps them still for a couple of minutes!
With these next portraits, the child was determined to cling on to his blanket - which he apparently never goes anywhere without. His parents, and I, pleaded with him to put it down and he just wasn't having any of it. So, eventually, we just incorporated it into the photos.
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With the first portrait you can see that we made a feature of the blanket, getting him to swing it around, which made for a great effect and added that extra point of interest to the photograph. With the second picture the blanket doesn't act so much as a prop, it isn't really an important feature of the portrait, but it helps the subject to feel comfortable enough to relax and for us to get a natural, happy smile from him - which just makes for a great picture.
I hope that this has been helpful in seeing how adding props to your portraits can bring many different benefits, without taking too much attention away from the main subject. Remember, the person being photographed is always the most important element of any portrait - the prop simply adds an extra layer.
2 Minute Movies: Tots Photo Shoot
Written by Andi Watson on 25 Mar 2011
In one of last week's notebook updates I said that having kids was both a challenge and a blessing. Well, I find that's also true of photographing kids! A while back I did a couple of photo shoots taking pictures of the children (and some parents) that attend my church's Tots & Co group. Here's a 2 Minute Movie of how I got on!
2 Minute Movies: Family Photo Shoot
Written by Andi Watson on 31 Mar 2011
I thought I'd share with you a 2 Minute Movie of what was a fairly typical family photo shoot. This will hopefully give you an insight into what's involved in getting portraits of your family, just in case you're thinking of getting a family shoot done at some point in the future.
I was really happy with these portraits, and I'm pretty sure the family were too!
YouTube seems to have added 1 second on to my video - it was only 2 minutes when I uploaded it, I promise!!
