Portrait Kit

Capturing Natural Child Portraits

When it comes to capturing a photograph of your kids there is no better way than to try to picture them in a natural setting. Don't get me wrong, I think there are some excellent studio imagery of kids, but my preference is with more naturalistic portraits, capturing the essence of a child doing something they like brings more to a photo; in fact it makes the image for me. This will not be a list places or activities for you to use, but hopefully will give some useful tips on how to get the best out of the setting you decide is best for your portrait session.

Personality is Key

As with all portrait photography it is vital to get to know the subject a bit, so if it isn't your child, then watching them at play and interacting with others will help you discern their personality and aid you in gauging what sort of environment they would be best photographed in or which activity would bring out their personality most. Talking to the parents (obviously if it is your own child you would likely already know enough) will help as will talking to the child, find out what they like, and what they dislike etc. And importantly try to find out what would make them feel comfortable while being photographed; uncomfortable poses will make for an uncomfortable portrait.

Locations and Activities

When you know enough about the child, choosing the location should become easy, very often with children it will be in their local park, in their garden or on the beach, but put limits on choosing; my kids are nature lovers so out in the woods or by a lake suits their personalities much better. Finding an activity to photograph them doing will often dictate the location. If the child loves the swings at a park, your choice is made, but try to think away from clichés. I once took my boys to collect conkers and got some wonderful photos of them mid air jumping on the shells to try to get to the nut inside and picking through the leaf litter in their search, these now sit proudly on our sideboard.

Lighting Choice

Once locations and activities are decided upon you need to assess lighting. In many situations natural sun light will be all you need, but this can often be too strong or not enough. Individual circumstances dictate what you need here, but some advice on different lighting tools follows.

When the sun is strong you will often find it to be the case that you need to use some form of fill light on faces to be able to see the details you would want (especially in a child's portrait), there are plenty of options available, often the cheapest (although not always the easiest) solution is to use some form of reflector angled to reflect the sun's rays back up onto the subject; while this is often great for naturalistic lighting it is limited, the brightness of the reflected light may not always be strong enough to eliminate shadow and your own ability to direct the light while taking the image both can cause issues, solo photographers will often be unable to position the reflector where it is needed (especially if it needs to be held) and be behind the camera at the same time. If this does turn out to be the case then flash (most often in the form of speedlights) will become your friend.

The built in flash of most cameras will work where reflectors are not viable, but the light is not easily controllable with these and can often be too harsh for this kind of work, so a dedicated external flash system is a useful tool in any photographers' kit bag. These units (often called speedlights) can be used on the cameras hot shoe or with cables or Remote Control units can be moved off the camera and positioned in where required. Set to be used as fill flash it will only help light the shadowy areas and not cause the image to become over expose. How to do this will depend a lot on the flash unit and the lighting conditions, but many tutorials for this type of work can easily be found online.

Capturing Movement

In some situations flash can be used in more "artistic" way, to stop the action of your subject or to stop part of the action, in low lighting conditions (or circumstances where you can get a slow shutter speed) setting the flash to sync with the front or rear curtain can give the impression of movement in a photograph. Here is an example; you have your subject child on a swing in the local park, the shutter speed is set to 1 second and the camera is on a tripod for stability, you set your flash up to flash with the rear curtain, and take some photos of the child in full swing, you should be able to see movement of the swing in most of the image but with a frozen end to the photo thus creating the impression of the swinging movement and bringing motion to your image. This movement will really bring life to an otherwise static image. In a similar way you can achieve movement without flash by, for example setting a slow (ish) shutter speed and positioning yourself opposite your child on a round-a-bout or similar, you will then capture a static image of the child but the movement will be surrounding them, these examples can be altered in many ways to suit your style, but it is often worth considering adding movement to child portraits as we know most children are balls of activity.

My parting comments are to enjoy taking the portraits, and enjoy the company of the children you are photographing, if you are having fun it will be evident in the final portrait and what really matters is that you (or your clients) like the image.

About the Author

Having been a birdwatcher all my life and an amateur for much of my adulthood I decided it was time to start using my writing skills to show others what I have learnt, and so my global web resource www.fatphotographer.net was born, (much of my writing can be found there).

portrait studio kit, which one is better?

For my home use and my hobby.
Which one is better?
Any suggetions?
THANK YOU !!!

here the links : http://www.amazon.com/2-LIGHT-STUDIO-MOTTLED-BACKGROUND-SUPPORT/dp/B001FD4QUG/ref=wl_it_dp_o?ie=UTF8&coliid=I1I3XX2WS9OOD5&colid=WVPXLVE5XHK8

or

http://www.amazon.com/PBL-PHOTOGRAPHIC-STUDIO-LIGHTING-COMPLETE/dp/B002N7P64S/ref=wl_itt_dp_o?ie=UTF8&coliid=I1DAOV1915D0YA&colid=WVPXLVE5XHK8

The 2nd one. More lights is more better. You will get way more use out of black and white muslins versus the blue one in the first kit. You might be able to buy a longer crossbar for bigger backdrops. The backdrops are a bit small for my tastes, but it depends what you're shooting.

I love the collapsable reflectors, but without a stand, you'd need someone to stand there and hold it the whole time. Its a useful thing to have, but not in the studio without a stand.

You will have a lot more flexibility with the 2nd kit. The first kit wouldn't be bad if you were shooting standard school portraits. Beyond that, who else wants to be in front of that blue backdrop? You should have a key light, fill light, and 2 misc. lights for hairlights or backdrop lights. Black is great because you can get away with no background light but you need to spill light on the subject from the back if they're wearing anything dark.

So 2nd kit. You can always add extras like a reflector and stand or another light, later. I think its worth much more than the extra $50. I think personally, the first kit is overpriced more than the 2nd one is a great value. Its a good value still. Check ebay too. They have bigger kits for sometimes less money. Good luck.

Portrait Kit

A Billabout Portrait: Kit Willow, New York City

Portrait $14.99 Portrait

A Portrait $14.99 A Portrait

Portrait Of $8.99 Portrait Of

How to choose tattoo needle sizes for your first tattoo kits

While choosing tattoo kits, the list of tattoo needles are only the amount, tattoo artists have to choose the sizes they want in the order comments. Many of them do not know how to choose tattoo needle sizes, cause some rarely used needles like 12RL and 13RS are only waste of money.

Strictly speaking, there is no such common tattoo needle sizes which is suitable for all tattooists. The selection of tattoo needles varies according to different artists' habits ,the types of tattoo designs and tattoo machines.

The sizes of tattoo needles are as the following:

(The size sources were copied from getbetterlife.com tattoo needle description)

Round liner size, (RL): 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

Round shader size (RS):  3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

Flat shader size (FS): 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15

Single Stack Magnum (M1) size: 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15

Double Stack Magnum (M2) size: 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17

Magnum Round size (MR or RM): 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15

Common tattoo needle sizes according to different needs:

1.  RL1, 3, 5 are for of small tattoo linings.

2.  RL7, 9, 14, 21, for whole back tattoo, and thick lines. The RL7 and RL 9 are perfect in shading tribal tattoo designs.

3.  FS5, 7, 9, 11, for making whip stroke, and shading.

4.  M5, 7, 9 for coloring small and medium tattoos.

5.  M11, 13, 15, 17 for large tattoo design coloring.

6.  The MR7, 9, 11 are for light shading, super for general portraits.

In fact, the most important thing to consider first is not the tattoo machines but the disposable tattoo needles and suited size tubes and tips. Cause, safe first. The disposable tattoo supplies are called one time used supplies, usually made of plastic and silica gel.

These tattoo supplies are very important for applying safe tattoos. Do not believe that ultrasonic tattoo cleaner could sterilize the supplies, the only professional way to sterilize your tattoo needles, tubes, tips and other re-useable tattoo supplies is autoclave. The ultrasonic cleaner performance great in, but for killing Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus. But bacteria like HIV could only be sterilized by autoclave sterilizer.

So now you know why better to buy disposable tattoo needles, tubes, tips, grips for your beginner tattoo kits.

About the Author

Getbetterlife.com is a leading worldwide wholesaler. More than 100 thousands of quality merchandises and big brand name products are available here at wholesale price. Start your wholesale sourcing here from today to experience best service and fast shipping.

Captain Sir Charles Hamilton Photo Mugs This half-length portrait in kit-cat format shows the sitter with his head turned to the right. He wears a captains full-dress uniform, 1795-1812, and a high white stock. At the time this portrait was painted the sitter was senior naval officer on the west coast of Africa. He later became Admiral of the Red.....

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Portrait Kit