Blog Hijack - Kid Pictures

Tess and her family are somewhere deep in the midwest, driving home. Kaela's tired and drawing octopi. That leaves me to take the reigns. I'm neither a writer nor an illustrator, but now and then I fancy myself a photographer. So, tonight I give you four pictures.

I take pictures. Lots of pictures. Everywhere. Antje's an obvious favorite, but kids in general can be very interesting. They don't flinch when you point the camera at them (at least not for the reasons adults do). They are always doing something intersting. And they're short. Short is good, because you never get the dreaded view-from-below-so-the-chin-looks-enormous look.

So here are four kid pictures I'm particularly proud of:









Only the last one belongs to me, obviously. I think there are a few good tricks to making kid pictures look intersting to people other than their parents:

1) Make them look really big. Crop close and get low.
2) Make them look really small. Get high and use a wide angle. Open space around them can exaggerate the effect in nice ways.
3) Make them look wise beyond their years. This is tough. It's far more interesting than making them look mature beyond their years (ick) or like silly little monkeys (gak). Kids have a lot going on inside and capturing that is precious.

--Mike Cramer