Childhood Photography: Capturing the Details

Hello The Crafting Chicks readers! I’m Michelle from Michelle Lea Creative. I spend my days as wife, mom to 3 awesome kiddos, photographer, graphic designer, and chauffeur. I’m so excited to be sharing a little post on photographing your little ones today.

I have been in love with photography since I was very young. I love to get lost in the story of an image and a few years ago, I realized how much I love my snapshots that capture the details of the moment or the current stage.

It can be hard to remind ourselves to get the details, but I promise you once you start looking for those moments they will appear without having to think about it. When you look at a photo you are naturally drawn to the eyes first and then the connection between the subjects… so we can miss some of the amazing little details of a moment. I love to document my little ones in a way that will tell the story of their childhood. My children are constantly asking “what was I like at x age, what did I like, or say, or do?” I think of my photos as a way for my children to know their story…. long after I am gone and can no longer tell it to them. I want my images to speak when I can’t… and now I’m crying haha. So what do I mean by the details?

My daughter had talked her Granny into buying these Crimson (cause we are OU fans and it’s crimson and creme of course!) hightop Converse for Christmas. She just loves them and this was the perfect day to capture them flying through the sky with the bright blue Oklahoma sky and whispy clouds behind them. Her shoes are the first thing that pop out at you in this photo.

Think outside the box when you are pressing down the shutter. I will get down on the ground, roll around, climb on top of something…. or even lay on the ground under my child swinging if it will get the shot that I want.

Another type of details shot that I like to capture are our daily routines… small glimpses into their lives and what they like. Here we are at breakfast with my youngest. You can still see his face in the reflection of the glass. I purposefully had his reflection in the frame, but it isn’t what you are drawn to first. It’s his little hands concentrating on eating his waffle. When I am inside my home, I open all of the windows and I will guide the kids to an area where the light is flowing in. I will raise my ISO and adjust my settings to get as much light into the image as possible.

We are in a little bit of a Thomas the Train obsession these days… just a little. He adores this Christmas present. I will use a wider aperture to keep in focus what I want to highlight in the photo.

This is my oldest, with his cell phone… in the middle of a photoshoot with Mom. I would kill for a photo of the big cell phone my parents had when I was little, or that big flip phone that I took to college with me!! Who knows what technology will look like when he is in college or taking photos of his children.

Let me say that life is not perfect! You’re house will not be perfectly clean or put together for the magical photo all the time. I challenge you to look back at your childhood photos that mean the most to you. They are probably slightly out of focus, bad angle, lighting… a million things, but they represent you and that is all that matters. My house is not perfect (reference the desk below), but it has love and that is the overall emotion that I want my children to remember. They won’t see the imperfections that I see. So take photos, as often as you can and write your history for your children to remember, when you are no longer here to tell them.

And get yourself in the details Moms and Dads, holding the hands of your children!

Thank you for letting me stop by and share a little bit of photography love with you today! Come visit me at Michelle Lea Creative or on Instagram. I shoot with a Canon 5D Mark iii that is my fourth baby and all of these images were shot with my 50mm 1.4 lens.