Tip 15 - How to get everyone to look at your camera?
As someone who enjoys capturing motion and energy in the most candid style, I rarely make posed family portrait where everyone smiles perfectly at the camera.
However, at the early stage of my photography journey, I took so many photos for other families and kids, and learned a few tricks to get everyone to look at the camera and nail the shots.
First, assume you take photos for your kids and family without yourself in the frame.
👉Baby
Babies are sensitive to noise. Keep the environment quiet. Use his/her favorite squeaky toys, or have someone stand right behind your camera and make funny faces. Just make sure whatever catches the baby’s attention is along the extension line between the baby and the camera (as opposed to standing too high or aside from the camera), so the baby appears looking at the camera instead of somewhere else in the shot.
👉Toddler
Toddlers love to move, are naturally curious, can understand and communicate in simple sentences. Play a game! “Can you come get my stick?” “Look what I just picked.” “Yum, I love this candy in my mouth”… Well, you get the idea. Talk to them with or without the prop. Your only challenge is not to forget clicking the camera while talking.
👉Kids older than the toddler age
Much easier to motivate if you know what the incentive is. I’ve heard ice cream bribery does the trick, no?
👉Kids with parents, grandparents or other adults
Ask the adults to look at the camera all the time. You are the one to communicate with kids. When the right time comes, you nail the shot. The worst case scenario is that the adults turn to the kids to help bring their attention to the camera, but forget to look at the camera themselves.
👉Now, as a parent, of course you want to include yourself in the shot, especially at a breathtaking scenery
Well, if you are travelers like us, and do not approach random strangers these days, you have to do selfies of course (I mentioned equipment and camera settings to do quality selfies in tip 29 - Art Of Unposing Selfie Tips). Put your DSLR on a sturdy surface, ideally between waist and eye level. Use a tripod. Even better, use intervalometer.
What I typically would do is to set the shutter to click multiple times in a roll - say 20-30 times. The goal is to catch the little ones’ attention. Even they were in the middle of something at the beginning, at some point, they realized something was going on and would turn to the camera.
Focus Tips:
If you want to use wide aperture for shallow depth of field (eg. f2.8), make sure everyone is standing in one line with the same distance to the camera. This will ensure everyone in the group is in focus. It is of course safer to use smaller aperture, ie. larger f-stop values (eg. f5.6), to increase depth of field, so your subjects can all be in focus even not standing strictly with the same distance to the camera.
The above are my fool-proof strategy to get everyone look at the camera, unless the kids are super sleepy or hungry, which is the scenario you want to avoid taking any family photos.
Go back to Camera Settings and Techniques Chapter
