Children Photography Tips | Environmental Portraiture

© 2011 Wazari Wazir | My Son Having Fun at Kinokuniya Book Store | Suria KLCC

My favorite lens for portrait photography is 50mm but when I need to include an environment for the subject I photograph, I will use wide angle lens but in this case, about the picture of my son above, I use Ultra Wide Angle Lens which is 10-20mm. The subject will look small in the frame but when we talk about environmental portraiture, it is more than just about the subject, it is about their surroundings also, where they lived, their work space, and their favorite place in a single frame.

Environmental portrait is best taken with wide angle lens, it is not about Bokeh, it is not about isolating the subject from the environment, it is about the environment and the subject where people can relate to, like in this picture above, even if I didn’t write any caption, viewers will know that this photograph were taken inside a book store, it is not taken in the library because you can see the reflections from the books there wrapping in plastics. They don’t wrap a books in a library, the only things that people didn’t know is the exact location of this book store. I took this shot at my favorite place in Kinokuniya Book Store located at Suria KLCC shopping complex which is situated inside Malaysia famous landmark, Petronas Twin Tower Kuala Lumpur City Centre.

Taking a picture of a child can be fun and challenging at the same time, they can never sit stills, always moving around, running here and there and the best thing that we can do to get this picture is to use Wide Angle Lens so that you can captured them even if they moved, they are still in the frames because there is a lot of rooms inside “wide angle point of view”. If I decided to use 50mm here and suddenly my son start running away, my frame will be “empty”.

This place or area is not so bright, I use HIGH ISO here because sometime my son will run or jump unexpectedly, I want to be always ready, so I use ISO 5000 for this shot and set the shutter speed to 1/160 at Aperture f4.5 with lens set at 10mm. Why I use HIGH ISO? It is because I need to use Hight Shutter speed, why I need to use High Shutter Speed? Because like I wrote before, sometimes my son will run or jump unexpectedly, I can use Low ISO like ISO 800 or 1000 and use shutter speed 1/60 0r 1/80 but if suddenly my son jump or run away, I will get  blurry picture at that speed. Actually before I took this shot, I have take a picture of my son jumping here, so I’ve locked the shutter speed and the ISO.

In this situation, I don’t mind about the grain factor because what is most important for me is getting the moment. It is good sometimes to take a picture of our subject or our family especially our very own child in their environment, in their favorite place. The environment engaged the viewers more about the subject. So the next time whenever you go out with your family don’t forget to bring along your wide angle lens, you can shoot discreetly, meaning that you can shoot “from the hip” without ever need to raise the camera to your eyes to take picture, especially here in the book store where we are not allowed to take a photographs here. Maybe they allowed it in your place but not here. So there you go my little secrets how I can get so much pictures of my son having fun at the book store, having wide angle lens made my job easier, the wider the better.