Tips for better Family Portraits

Your Photo Shoot
So, you’ve decided to get a photo taken of your family – aint that sweet! Below are some tips to make sure you get the result you are hoping for … a beautiful family portrait that you can store in your wallet, give as a gift, hang on your wall and treasure forever.

Getting the most out of your photos:
There’s a few simple things you can do to make sure your pictures are the best they can be

• Get individual shots taken at the same time as your family portrait – it might take a bit longer but you’re already dressed up anyway so make the most of it!
• Take shots of mum & dad together, siblings, best friends etc – group your family members together to get a wide variety of shots you can use for your wall or your wallet
• Make the most of your budget by being creative and look at the options that fit within what you are prepared to spend – decide on the budget before you start, so you don’t get carried away after you see the shots and buy them all!
• If you want to avoid expensive printing costs from premium photographers, shop around for a photographer who will give you a CD of photos to print yourself. You will probably pay a little more up front, but it will save you from returning to the photographer each time you want a reprint.

What to wear:
While matching clothes may be a bit corny, the effect of a family dressed the same can give a real unity and consistency to the photo. It also makes sure the photo is more about the faces, the people, the relationships and the ‘moment’, rather than being about what you are wearing. Now before you head out and buy Dad a dress, ‘the same’ can be as simple as a repeated element or color such as:

• Dress everyone in black shirts & jeans or white shirt & jeans
• Dress everyone in the same colored shirt or boys & girls in opposite colors
• Ensure nobody is wearing clashing or prominent colors such as bright red and yellow or hawaiian shirts, unless this is the effect you are going for! At least talk before you leave the house!
• Nose rings rock! But in photos they look like ‘something landed on your face’. Your call.
• Dress to create the photo you want to achieve. If you only want headshots, make sure your heads look good. Do your hair. Wear a nice, clean, pressed top. Don’t drink a bottle of bourbon before hand. If you want full body shots, wear decent shoes or none at all. If you want a relaxed, beachy feel to your photos or a country, farm feel then dress appropriately.
• If you’re a silly family, then be silly. What’s wrong with a family portrait of the whole family wearing clown noses? Or dressed in costume of the same theme? It’s your family, so capture what makes you special.

Makeup:
Some portrait companies may offer you the option of a full makeover before your photo – if this is within your buget, DO IT! It’s fun having someone else do the work … and being pampered with some attention is a great way to relax you before your photos and bring out your inner confidence. Good foundation will clear out any blemishes in the skin, but then so can good photoshop in the editing process so don’t be too concerned!

If you are doing your own makeup, try not to overdo it but it is a good idea to wear lipstick and some eyeliner and mascara. Too much makeup and you’ll look like a drag queen, but not enough makeup and your features may disappear into your face.

Think of the future:
Did you ever have a portrait done in the 80’s? And did you think you were super cool back then? And is that family portrait now hidden in the depths of the family photo box, never to be seen again? Firstly, you should get that portrait out of the closet and display it proudly on your wall – you might not like what you were wearing NOW, but you loved it then and a photo is meant to capture a moment in time and freeze it forever. So you had a mullet and wore flouro plastic beads – so what, its part of who you are – and besides, it will give all your new friends a laugh.

However if you don’t want a portrait that dates too obviously, avoid trends and stick with classic … classic clothes, classic makeup, classic hair, classic setting. If you want a portrait that you can look back on and laugh at, then pull out those fashion mags and glam it up baby!

Do your research:
There are millions of talented photographers around the world with web pages to showcase their work. Browse their websites, look through galleries and visit as many websites as you can to get a wide variety of options and ideas You may find someone you like who happens to be in your area.

Here’s some good examples of portfolio’s featuring family portraits:

http://www.mccrystalimage.exposuremanager.com/
http://www.creativeportrait.com/
http://www.snapshotpics.com/
http://www.vanostrom.com/family.html

Location:
Indoors
A studio will give you a range of benefits such as clean backgrounds, additional lighting, green screen, instant photo viewing and a host of other effects which can only be achieved with electricity and technology. Decide the type of photo you want to achieve and ask your photographer if they have a studio to produce the result.

Outdoors
There are beautiful outdoor locations everywhere like waterfalls, beaches, rainforests, ponds, mountains and funky smelling, inner city, back alleys with that certain ‘urban chic’. Be careful not to stand in front of a backdrop that you will get lost in or that clashes with your clothing.

Time of Day:
The recommended shooting times are early morning or late afternoon and the worst time is noon, but this really can vary depending on your location. Shooting in late afternoon is risky, as the sun may set leaving you with no light at all. Shooting in the afternoon in some locations can also cause long shadows which can be frustrating to shoot around.

Posing:
There’s nothing worse than a photo of people trying hard to appear happy and relaxed – that usually results in stiff smiles and tense bodies and a photo that does nothing to capture your spirit. Be creative with angles, heights, activities and silly fun. Jump around, build a sandcastle or go sky diving!

What NOT to do:
· DON’T stress out!
· DON’T be boring!
· DON’T try to be someone else!
· DON’T take it too seriously

Did the Internet break the Economy?

Well, did it?

Naked Children as art?

"I see their [children] work [posing naked] with me only giving them a sense of pride and pleasure in later life."

You would be forgiven for thinking the above sentence was spoken by a paedophile in a police interview in defence of owning a collection of inappropriate photos of children - but it's actually a statement from Australian artist, Bill Henson, attempting to justify his 'art' to an outraged world.

Bill Henson's star has grown, making him a household name with the media outrage about his recent exhibition filling news and current affairs programs for months. The exhibition featured photos of a 12 year old girl simply standing naked, beautifully lit and showing an innocence on her face that might bring an art lover to tears ~ a beautiful piece of art.

Previous exhibitions have seen girls of similar ages posed naked in a variety of settings, including a piece titled "Untitled 1985/86" which shows a young girl naked on a bed, with her legs slightly spread ... it is here that the true controversy begins - the line between capturing a moment of innocence or drawing the viewer (and therefore, the subject) into a sexual space.

Art has always brought with it a set of rules - or should I say, exceptions to rules - where the standards and laws that apply to the rest of society can be broken, provided the subject or action has 'artistic merit'. This includes photos of naked children.

Artistic Merit

'Artistic Merit' is a well known grey area used successfully by much of the porn industry, famously battled in the courts by media man Larry Flynt who fought obscenity laws by using 'artistic merit' as defence. Suspected obscenity is not considered obscene if the subject or message has artistic or educational merit ~ a vague law which means simply adding an article or some information to a pornographic image makes it 'art'.

Does it seem strange to anyone else that parents have been prosecuted via child pornography related charges after bringing rolls of film featuring their children playing in the bath to an over cautious photo development store while Bill Henson's exhibition is met with congratulations from those who consider themselves more cultured than the rest of us?

After a decade of working with adult material, I can almost guarantee that the photos of the young girl have made it into paedophile collections around the world, her budding pubescent nipples providing titillation for a disturbed portion of our society. The photos will be stored on hard drives, printed in albums and stuck on walls alongside clothing catalogues and in many cases with truly disturbing shots of children being exploited in ways most of us can only imagine.

While our laws may allow the photo of a child on a bed with her legs spread to be legal due to artistic merit, paedophile rings clap with glee at this major loophole that could very well protect them in their 'business'. While toddlers go missing from hotels in foreign countries and children are sold by their economically struggling parents into hellish sexual circumstances, we sit back obliviously arguing the acceptability of naked children as art.

Protecting our children

I'm sure you will forgive me for taking the creative rights of this artist a little less seriously than I take the rights of these children to be protected and cared for. How can we teach children that it is not acceptable for them to let themselves be photographed naked while our most popular media representatives garble on about 'artistic merit'?

What message are we sending to other 12 year old girls when we express how beautiful Bill Henson's 12 year old naked subject is, while at the same time we are trying to teach them to avoid all of the sexual messages thrown at them by our society and media? How can we tell other 12 year old girls, desperately looking for love and approval of their appearance, to keep their clothes on and respect their bodies when we allow artists to exploit the desires of young girls in the name of art, publicity and money?

Bill Henson told Fairfax Media, "The girl's parents are fine because they believe in what they believe in," a statement that scares me more than anything else I've read about this subject. The assumption that all parents are only concerned about what is best for their children is simply wrong. While these parents might have thought it a great honour for their child to be asked to be a subject for a famous artist, have they let this feeling overpower their common sense and better judgement in their role as parents?

Child Beauty Queens as Sexual Objects

For over a decade, since the Internet became a major part of our lives, web sites have existed which fall completely within the legal bounds of American law (which means the sites are available for us to view in Australia). Young girls in the pageant world have their own websites, filled with images of themselves in their costumes, getting ready and generally telling the story (in photos) of their life as junior performers.

The name given to these groups of sites is 'non nude'. As these sites fall into a high risk billing category, the parents use billing companies which specialized in porn site billing to charge a monthly subscription fee which allows members access to the content on these websites.

The children are fully clothed, so technically no laws are being broken - but the very existence of these sites has no other purpose than the entertainment of those who like looking at young girls in Lycra.

For me the art of Bill Henson falls somewhere into this category - it is simply unnecessary for it to exist at all when the cost (the right of a child to be sexually innocent) is so high. Parents are blinded by their selfish desires to make their offspring famous where they failed in their own goals completely ignoring the long term effects of sexualizing children on the individual and society alike.

What is a Paedophile?

About.com provides a definition of the qualities of a Paedophile, designed to help parents and children alike recognise someone whose intentions are less than honourable. These are some of the points made in their article:

• Many paedophiles often prefer children close to puberty who are sexually inexperienced, but curious about sex.
• He will often refer to children in pure or angelic terms using descriptives like innocent, heavenly, divine, pure, and other words that describe children but seem inappropriate and exaggerated.
• The paedophile will often be employed in a position that involves daily contact with children.
• Paedophiles work to master their manipulative skills and often unleash them on troubled children by first becoming their friend, building the child's self esteem. They may refer to the child as special or mature, appealing to their need to be heard and understood then entice them with adult type activities that are often sexual in content such as x-rated movies or pictures.
• It is not unusual for the child to develop feelings for the predator and desire their approval and continued acceptance. They will compromise their innate ability to decipher good and bad behaviour, ultimately justifying the criminal's bad behaviour out of sympathy and concern for the adult’s welfare. This is often compared to Stockholm Syndrome - when victims become attached emotionally to their captors.
• One factor that works against the paedophile is that eventually the children will grow up and recall the events that occurred. Often paedophiles are not brought to justice until such time occurs and victims are angered by being victimized and want to protect other children from the same consequences.

Quotes from the artist

"They see their involvement in the work as a good thing, a positive thing."

"Unlike everyone else, I do have first-hand experience of working with these people (children) - working with them for years and seeing them grow up.

"I see their work with me only giving them a sense of pride and pleasure in later life."

In Conclusion

It is no secret that children like to do the exact opposite of what their parents tell them, which brings us to the scary prospect of your 12 year old daughter asking you if she too can have a beautiful portrait of herself just like Bill Henson's subject.

When you say no, can you be sure she hasn't been influenced by the discussion in the media, leaving her open to predators and exploitation?

How can we expect our children to use good judgement when, as adults, we can't even agree on a subject that should be black and white rather than the ever-increasing shades of grey we continue to make with our debates?

How are you going to teach your child the difference between a sexual predator and an 'artist' who wants to capture their innocent beauty? Do you know the difference yourself? And more importantly ... does the artist?

More information:

http://www.theage.com.au/news/arts/auctioneer-defends-henson/2008/09/09/1220857549207.html