How to Photograph Children by Carol M. Highsmith (Part 1)

My name is Carol M. Highsmith and I have enjoyed photographing America for the past 30 years. I am planning to donate my collection of images to the Library of Congress copyright-free.

As you see I am featured in the top six collections along side of Civil War Photographer Mathew Brady and WPA Photographer Dorothea Lange. I am very honored to be listed among such famous photographers. I feel the reason I am included on this list is because I am showcasing America – 21st Century America as we look right now. One hundred years from now people will view these images and find them fascinating. By then cars may be gone and people may be wearing Star Trek outfits!

I plan to contribute my thoughts about how I go about taking images each month in the Gozaic blog. I love this site and the National Trust for Historic Preservation so this is a wonderful place for me to share my thoughts with you about my photography.

I recently started a project to go across the country and photograph every state over the next sixteen years. This project is called 21st Century America and all of the images will be donated copyright-free to the Library of Congress. Each state will be photographed as funds are raised for me to travel. I just finished the state of Alabama and I loved every minute of the journey. I thought some of these images might be a good start for my photo blog on Gozaic.

Although I am known as an architectural photographer, I love to photograph just about anything. I recently photographed some children on the road in Alabama. I’ve described how I set these images up and how the children greatly added to each scene.

Very serious looking children at a Civil War Reenactment in Bridgeport, Alabama.
Way back in time when the Civil War was active, Mathew Brady and his assistants would travel out across the battlefields to document the battles and the soldiers in their camps. They used large cumbersome cameras and glass plates to capture each image. When the images were taken, the subject had to hold still so they usually did not smile or move. You can see in this image, the children understood how they needed to look in order to pretend like the photograph was taken in 1865. Not easy to get children to sit still, but I think their father had trained them how to pose.

Chasing a goat during a goat chase at a picnic in Monroe County, Alabama.

How much fun it is to see children play a game? The point of this event was to catch the poor goat. I blurred some of the children and captured the boy in yellow perfectly sharp. The best way to do this is to set your camera on a slower speed. It helps show the action in a still image.

Birds fly around young boys playing in the surf of Mobile Bay in Fairhope, Alabama.
How did I attract the birds? Always bring nuts! I was enjoying some Alabama pecans when I happened upon these young boys with their grandparents enjoying the beach. I grabbed my nuts and told them to play in the surf and caught the action. In this case I wanted to make sure everything in the image was sharp. It helped that it was a sunny day.

Tomorrow in Part 2, I'll share more tips on photographing children.