For those that don’t normally photograph young’uns, I’ve got news for you — it’s not that easy. Well, it’s very simple to take pictures, but where the difficulty lies is in getting good pictures.

Unlike teenagers or adults, these little ones have no idea what photography is all about let alone listening to posing suggestions. You’ve got to let them be themselves and be ready to capture those great moments.

The one thing I set my mind to when going out to photograph little ones is patience. Knowing in advance that you most likely won’t be able to pose the child exactly as you wish and get that spontaneous smile or funny face, allows me to treat the photo shoot like a sporting event — and I LOVE sports!

If you’ve got other tips, I’d be glad to hear them.

The sun is a wonderful light source — especially in the early morning or late afternoon. But if the sun is coming in from the side, you get some pretty dark shadows on the opposite side.

Inspired by the images of Brent Williamson I decided to try a bit of crosslighting this afternoon.

With the beautiful warm late afternoon sun to work with shining onto the subject from the right, I setup a 580EX off to the left about 15 feet away at 1/32 power. Triggered using pocket wizards, the direct flash put just enough light into the dark shadow areas for a pleasing photograph. The idea is to use the flash in a very subtle way as to not even look like flash was used.

This is a very simple setup. If you don’t have pocket wizards, an off-camera sync cord will work just as well.

My son was playing on the floor the other day and I was noticing his beautiful blue eyes. I grabbed my camera and took a nice closeup of him.

I processed the image using Nicole V’s actions and was extremely pleased with the outcome.