Children Photography Tips | Color Does Matter

© 2010 Wazari Wazir | A Portrait of My Son | Langkawi Kedah

Child photography can be fun and challenging at the same time especially when it comes to photographing our very own child where they already get used being in front of the camera. I’ve been photography my son since the very fist day he was born, and nowadays he will always get irritated being photograph and it is very hard for me to keep him still and let alone to make him look at the lens. Even though I’ve tried al kind of silly jokes, most of the times it rarely get my son attention, maybe I was not good enough at making jokes.

Anyway, the picture above were taken during our holiday in Langkawi Island Kedah, one of Malaysia popular travel destination for domestic tourist and also international tourist. The photograph were taken at Mahsuri Mausoleum in one of the traditional house there. There are many people walking behind my son there, so I’ve to wait for the right moment to captured this picture. I know that the bright color light coming from my son back can be distracting but I need that light to create a separation between my son and the background and also to have some depth in between them. I can easily “paint” or “clone” that background to be totally black but I will not do that because I need that light to create depth or space between my son and the background or the wall behind.

Actually in this post, I just wanted to share few tips about colors an how important it is to make or break our picture. When it comes to photographing my son, I will always planned ahead, meaning that I’ve a very solid idea where I’m going to and what kind of environment there, what colors are there, what color theme are there in the place that I wanted to visit. When I know the place color scheme, I will choose the right color for my son clothing. I will make sure that the colors will make my subject stand out from the environment or the surroundings, I just don’t want my subject to blend with the surrounding or becoming a camouflage where viewers really need to look hard in order to find the subject.

So basically choosing the right colors is very important, can you imagine what my son look like if I choose a black or grey color cloth for him? I’m sure it may not look so interesting and if I were to choose a black T-shirt for my son, for sure it will blend with the background and I don’t want that to happen. If you don’t quite sure about the color scheme of the place that you planned to visit, my advise is that bring extra colorful clothes or maybe a jacket where it can easily put on or take off from your subject.

This is not only applicable for children photography, in fact for any portrait session, be it small kids or even our parents, just bring extra clothes, I mean colorful clothes where we can match with the surrounding, the idea is that we want to make our subject to stand out from the environment, the words “contrast” we want to have a contrast between our subject and their surrounding, unless you want to make your subject to appear like a camouflage, then it is another story.

I can improve this picture a bit by putting something on my son head, a colorful hat would be nice so that my son black hair doesn’t blend with the black background, but the truth is he feels uncomfortable each and every time I try to put a hat on his head, he get irritated and will throw away the hat immediately before I get the picture. To those of you who are facing with this kind of environment where your subject have a black colored hair, putting something on their head will greatly improve the picture, but if your subject have a blonde hair then it would be easy, blonde hair against a black background will be stand out on their own.

So the next time you plan to go out and shoot some portrait, be it a family members, your friends or your clients, just keep in mind about colors. Choosing the right color does matter.

* If you are interested to know about the editing for the picture above, just click the banner below…

Related Post : Master of Colors

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