This guide is written more for photographing handknits or other items being worn by babies or toddlers. Most of this will apply to any sort of photography, but is more specific to photographing children.

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Indoor or Outdoor Lighting

In most cases it is best to take your photographs outdoors in natural light. If you have a fantastic spot indoors that is great for taking fabulous photos, that is always an option but for the most part outside is best. It is also the preferred "environment" and "background" for Petite Purls photography. When photographing indoors you not only have to battle having good natural light but you also have to make sure something doesn't end up in the photo that should not be there, such as dirty socks, a random dog or cat and toys or other items which may not match or blend well with the item being photographed.

The best and most beautiful photographs will not use the flash; that sort of photography is best reserved for weddings or other situations in which there are no other options. Natural lighting is best, but you also want your lighting to be filtered.

Filtered light: Outdoors

What is filtered lighting? If you go outside on a sunny day at 3pm in the afternoon you will wind up with harsh shadows on the subject’s face, or even worse, shade lines on the ground that can be very distracting and ruin the symmetry and balance of a photo. Good times to photograph for natural filtered lighting is in the early morning before the sun is up, in the afternoon after the sun has gone down enough to make the day look overcast, and of course, on overcast days. One of the best times to photograph plants for instance is on an overcast day after it rains. The freshly damp grass and trees make for a very rich photo, and while everything may look gray to your eye, the photos can turn out quite vibrant and fantastic. This is a bit harder with children and clothing because you can't have them getting wet and dirty, but it is achievable if you know the surface you will be working on won't be wet. Sometimes I don't have a choice as to what time of day I will photograph my child. I am dependent on her mood and how cleaned up she may be at the moment. You want to photograph a child when they are happy, relaxed, well rested and well fed. When this comes at a less then good time for lighting, I just hunt outside for a shady spot. When I look through my lens, I make sure I am lined up so as not to get any shade lines on the grass or ground, and sometimes I can crop them out later but I prefer to have the initial photograph avoid them all together.

Filtered light: Indoors

If you have a fantastic spot indoors, with excellent natural lighting and a good background, you can use that as well, but as stated above, outside is preferred. Inside you will have to hold the camera more still and probably take more photographs in order to avoid having blurry shots. Toddlers move around a lot. I often have my husband stand behind me and work on asking my daughter (21 months) to say "cheese", or other methods of keeping her distracted by doing various cute things. This way I focus on my composition,keeping my hand steady, and when needed, adjusting her outfit.

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Props for Kids

You will want to avoid anything too cheesy for props. Natural is best, an old bench under a tree, a beautifully handcrafted quilt to sit on in the grass. With my daughter it has always helped to give her something to hold: on many occasions it has ended up being my lens cap. Having something in her hand keeps her from looking for things to put into her hands so I have more control over what the photo will look like and what will be in the photo. A cute tape measure can be very entertaining to a child and if you color coordinate it, it can be barely visible in a final shot. You want to avoid stuff they might put in their mouth: I've tried sticks from outside but she often chews on them and then winds up with a bit of bark on her mouth. Sometimes a flower is a good prop for the child to hold, or even a favorite stuffed animal (not too large) or small wooden toy. I don't take too much time planning ahead with these toys, as very often kids are far more interested in playing with a cardboard box than with some wonderful toy you picked out from Etsy for the sole purpose of being in the photo. It's a grand plan that often goes wrong.

Props & Clothing Do's and Don'ts

It is very important that when you do pick out outfits to coordinate with the handcrafted item, or background elements for the photo shoot, that nothing overpowers the actual item you want to highlighted. For clothing you want to pick out something simple and cute. If you pair a knit cardigan with an elaborate (but beautiful) skirt, it could turn the reader’s focus on the skirt instead of the pattern. If the skirt is a bold red and the cardigan is white, it may not be noticed in the photo at all. For props, the same rule follows. If you use a teddy bear you don't want something that clashes with everything else in the photo, but you also don't want something that distracts from the actual subject of the photograph. These same rules come into play for anything in the background of a photo. It is totally acceptable to theme a photo. For example: the fair is in town and your design is of an adorable, whimsical skirt you named "cotton candy", so you want to get a shot of the child wearing the skirt in front of a cotton candy machine at the fair. This could be a really fantastic photo, but always have a back up plan and give yourself enough time to attempt the photo shoot more then once, very likely on another day in case the first doesn't go as planned.

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Photographing a Child

One very important part of photographing a child is making sure you remain calm and collected. If the child is not cooperating and has no interest in the corner of the yard you are photographing them in, sit back, relax, and let them play for a bit. Let them run around the yard, get some energy out and come over to your corner thinking it's their great idea. Sometimes I just play with them for a while, other times I make a big deal out of whatever it is in that area I want to photograph the child in. I've had my daughter help me pick weeds, allowed her to pick the heads off flowers (that later came back to haunt me, she now likes to deadhead any flower she sees!) and point out bugs and various things in the area I want her to play in. When it's hot, I normally end up fairly exhausted and sweaty in my efforts to keep her attention and get a good shot, and often out of 50 shots (or more) I only get 2 that I like.

It is not always imperative that the child be looking straight into the camera and smiling. Obviously you want to see as much of their face as possible, but the focus of the photo is the pattern, not the child. Of course the better the child looks, the better the item will look but I have some cute shots where my daughter was not looking directly at the camera. I often make great efforts to get her to smile and if I can get a profile shot with a big smile or laugh it can turn into a great shot.

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Photo Manipulation

If you prefer to tweak the color/contrast/saturation of your photos that is okay, but it is very important that you not tweak them so much that all of the photos in the issue will not match in style and color. If one person tweaks their photo to have very high contrast and extremely bright colors it may look strange against the other photos (worst case scenario: provide us with the originals and your tweaked version so if we need to do any matching we can). We would like to ask that you deliver the photos in their original format (with mild color correction and tweaking as needed) but please do not crop your photos to nonstandard sizes. For example if a photo is 640x480 and you want to crop 5 pixels off the bottom it will now be 640x475. We can make any final crops as necessary and would prefer to work with the original file as much as possible. This is not a strict rule but if you are not sure what to do just leave it to our team to crop the photo. We can also remove a blemish or scratch if needed. Also, please do not add any borders to the photographs.