The challenge of photographing kids

It’s challenging taking photos of young children, even more so when there are two of them. During this photo shoot for Stylo magazine I had a lot doubt about my photography skills.

American Gothic by Grant Wood was not my inspiration, but the serious expressions on the faces of my 2 models is more art than high fashion. I can roll with that.

In an attempt to get the kids to work the camera, my brother gave direction. “Where is Scout’s nose?” he said to his 2 year old son.

 “Where’s her mouth?” Clearly my brother has no experience in high fashion photo shoots, but he tried.

“Let’s try some balloons,”  he suggested. It sounded like a good idea until Tengo fell off the stool. Ooops!

Don’t worry. No harm done.

But, best sit down and read a nice calming book.

Tengo’s t-shirt is from the new summer collection by Madeit Patterns (coming soon). The unique colour blocking makes it the perfect pattern to use up any little scraps of knit fabric that you have lurking around. But for Tengo’s version I used the finest jersey from NOSH. As I’ve said before, this fabric is excellent quality. Once you use NOSH organic fabric there will be no going back.

His origami pants is a pattern by Kleinformat, the shop has some seriously cool patterns. Right up my street. I want this, I want this, I want this, and these for me.

The fabric looks like denim but behave like sweatshirt. I absolutely love it. It comes in other colours too.

Sometimes when I buy a pattern it takes me ages to sew it. I can’t wait to get going but I need to be 100% happy with my fabric choice before I start. This only happens with certain patterns, some patterns demand great fabric choices. The Louisa dress by Compagnie M. is that such pattern. I even started a Pinterest board to inspire me.

Finally I decided on Scandinavian Style Triangle Pattern 20s Cotton from luckyshop0228 on Etsy, which went perfectly with Robert Kaufman Kona cotton solid, Storm and Azure from Plush Addict.

Do you have patterns like that, where you just have to have the right fabric? There are others that I have, the Ishi dress, the Fawn Lily dress and the Gardenia dress for example. I’d love to see yours if you’ve made any of these.

Though the shoot was a challenge, it wasn’t a disaster. The kids had fun.

But the photos didn’t always show that.

 The camera can sometimes lie.