Shoot The Kids

I’ll admit I don’t do kids very well. I used to when I was a young newspaper photographer but not so much anymore. But this shot from my local camera club’s recent photo competition will do for today’s post.

We’re talking about shooting the kids and why that should be an essential part of your photography education.

So if you’ve got kids or can borrow your neighbour’s kids you’ll learn a lot about how to shoot street-style portraits by practicing on the youngsters.

At the end of this post I’m going to put up a link to Gary Lashmar’s The Street Thief’s fabulous YouTube site which I highly recommend all of you watch all of the over 200! videos he’s posted about street photography.

Gary is a world-class photographer and he lists some of his achievements in this video so you know you’re hearing from an expert. And as an expert he says something I’ve been saying for a long time and that’s this:

Most of the so-called street photography you see on FaceBook and YouTube and Instagram is basically just snapshots. This is even more true when it comes to street portraits.

There’s a huge difference in the quality of the image from a snap shot which might occasionally be pretty good and a street portrait where the photographer has taken the time to pose their subjects. He or she has picked a background and often is using reflectors or even flash to bring out the aspects of their subject that they wish to bring out in the photo.

So where do you learn how to do this? Why you shoot the kids of course!

Here’s the link to Gary’s seven minute tutorial on how and why to shoot the kids. As I said it’s excellent and will vastly improve your street photography portrait work.