Photographing Children With Large Format

This idea came up tonight in the Chat Room while Suzanne Revy and were discussing the topic. Our intent is to start a thread describing experiences photographing children with large format.

The technique has to be quite different than using a small camera. There's no camera mobility, although the kids remain quite mobile. You can't rapidly click off a roll and hope for a good one. One shot is probably all you get, maybe two if your subject is happy.

So here's my first and only success to date. Taken this last Father's Day, Madison was fourteen months old. As I set up the big Deardorff, she thought the tripod would be a great thing to climb on. Gently removing her from that activity, she got on my knee and under the darkcloth with me while I focused. After setting exposure, loading film, cocking the shutter, and pulling the darkslide, we sat her in place, and I tripped the shutter. She got just a bit apprehensive as you can see, and started to turn her head during the exposure. That gave a little motion blur, but I liked the effect. No second shot was going to be possible.

Polaroid Type 55, 4x5, at 25 asa. Natural light, 1 second at f/8.

One of my favorites. A local church had just opened a new sanctuary building and asked me to photograph it. I went out to the site early in the morning with my youngest son in tow. I decided that the orientation of the building was such that it would be in it's best light in the evening.

Determined not to come home empty handed, I set my son down in front of one of the large concrete raised flower beds out front, gave him the light meter and showed him what button to push....we talked a little bit and then I walked over to the camera, waited for eye contact and, made this exposure. He was chatting away the whole time.

320TXP, HC-110 dilution D, 210mm Geronar, f/16 & 1/60 sec, 4x5 Crown Graphic

Brad,

Nice shot of your son, is he holding your meter? I see that the lens was a 210mm Geronar, I presume this was shot with a 4X5. You omitted the camera and format.

Rich

naturephoto1 said:

Brad,

Nice shot of your son, is he holding your meter? I see that the lens was a 210mm Geronar, I presume this was shot with a 4X5. You omitted the camera and format.

Rich

Click to expand...

Rich,
Thanks!

It was a 4x5 Crown Graphic. Graham is holding the meter - and "calling out the meter readings" to me....He was so thrilled to have the meter in his posession that he sat relatively still for the whole time I was focussing.

BradS said:

Rich,
Thanks!

It was a 4x5 Crown Graphic. Graham is holding the meter - and "calling out the meter readings" to me....He was so thrilled to have the meter in his posession that he sat relatively still for the whole time I was focussing.

Click to expand...

Brad,

I see we may have another next generation film shooter.

Rich

naturephoto1 said:

Brad,

I see we may have another next generation film shooter.

Rich

Click to expand...

Two of 'em !

This sounds an interesting thread - I'll be following it, though I don't have LF (yet?)

Cate

I tried - not easy! The only way to get anything remotely focused in the 16 nanoseconds of attention span and child immobility was to set up a strobe and stop down to f/16!
Polaroid Type 52, Sinar F2, Schneider Apo Symmar 210mm

I must admit, after looking through Sally Mann's 'Immediate family', I too felt inspired to get an LF. For some reason, probably financial, I never got round to it. I really like the portability and freedom of movement you get with MF and 35mm when photographing kids, but LF stills appeals.

I've only done it once, and that was with my niece when she was just a baby. Camera was an Omega 4x5 with 210mm Schneider Symmar-S; film was Kodak VPS. The parents placed her on a stack of pillows on the floor, and she sat reasonably still while I focused and shot. Results were good. This must have been about 1980. Two years ago I shot her wedding... with Leicas and Nikons.

My uncle used to have a Speed Graphic, and he did studio portraits of his sons with it. Gorgeous photos, all B&W.

Brad, great shot(s) of the kids. I really like the chair, feet and Tigger in the second shot. The one of your son at the church turned out very well. Not bad for "old technology" and old technique. Very crisp and great highlights. I would like to try this, but the frustration factor would be pretty high on these types of shots. tim

Alex, thanks for starting this thread! I'm going to take the kids into the darkroom this morning to make photograms, and (ulterior motive alert!) to get a print of my one 8x10 exposure! I know it's fogged a bit, and suffers from some motion blur from this wobbly old camera I have! But, hey, childhood is all about motion blur!

I love your photograph of your granddaughter, btw. Now, that is something special!

NikoSperi said:

I tried - not easy! The only way to get anything remotely focused in the 16 nanoseconds of attention span and child immobility was to set up a strobe and stop down to f/16!
Polaroid Type 52, Sinar F2, Schneider Apo Symmar 210mm

Click to expand...

Wow, I love this one.
Did you have another strobe on the background?

You guys have seen these before but I thought I'd contribute to the thread anyways.

The first shot was done in a studio with directed halogen track lighting and probably the modeling light of one strobe. The lens was the junky thing that came with the camera. When I say junky I really mean that as a term of love. Camera was 5x7 and I think the film was JandC classic 200.

Second was done with the same camera but the lens was an old projector lens (Petzval type) and packard shutter. Film was Ilford FP4. Availible early evening light outside.
I consider myself still in the testing phase of working out what I can get from this camera and lens. Maybe after another box of film I'll have a better idea.

My first attempt and probably best success. Kid wasn't happy at all and was bawling and screaming. I just sat and waited till it looked like she wasn't. *click*

I got an idea about 6 months ago from reading the Minor White chapter in the Adam's Polaroid book that works very well and I've used it a lot since then. White was describing using polaroids to do portraits where the photographer would try to get the sitter to display a certain emotion or state of mind. Then they would try the same thing, but without using any words. They would also switch places during this process so that sitter became photographer and vice versa.

I took this idea and applied it to kids by letting them take pictures of one another using type 55 on my 4x5. The largest group I have done is a K-1 class at my daughter's school which was 16 kids and took awhile. I'll describe what I did then, but it is much easier with two or three siblings. First I have all of the kids pair up. Then we do one pair at a time. The others can go off and play or whatever. The first child sits down or stands and thinks about what pose to do. All I told them was to sit in the same spot and not move around too much (which doesn't always work). I then position and focus the camera, take the meter reading, etc. and let the other kid look at the gg under the darkcloth (they love this), let them dry run the shutter a couple of times (they love this), then load the film and tell them to stand by the lens and push the button when they are ready. I sometime tell the sitter to try and figure out what emotion/face the taker wants them to make, but this is often just unnecessary as they naturally figure it out themselves. I then process the type 55 and keep the negative, which I enlarge for the parents. Then we switch places and do it again.

I've gotten some of the most amazing expressions out of children. Or, I should say, they get the most amazing expressions out of each other. Stuff that I sometimes get myself, but they almost always get. It is quite amazing.

A couple of technical notes: a self-cocking shutter or a finicky shutter is a recipe for disaster unless the children are a little older as they tend to fire it like a machine gun given the opportunity. Also, I'm not sure that 3 year olds can do it. I've never tried. My 4 year old is fine, but that's him.

I give them the polaroid after coating it, but there is usually a lot of pollen and other crap blowing around which will all stick to the polaroid so beware.

I've had lots of problems with scratches on negatives putting them into the clearing tank with the slots. They slide around and hit one another no matter what I do. I think individual sandwich bags with a little water (or don't process the film there at all) are the way to go to insure no scratches. I had one negative badly scratched one time that turned out to be the kid's favorite picture eventually. When I enlarged it I took a toy godzilla (this guy loves Godzilla, but then doesn't everybody?) and positioned it over the scratches so that it appeared that Godzilla was in the picture with him. He couldn't figure out how I did it. Fun.

I meter at 40 or 45 and usually shoot pretty wide open as a result, but I just got an Imagon, so I'm going to try that. Though kids don't need the softness so much. But you have to keep the shutter speed up there because they move.

Best,

Will

MenacingTourist said:

Wow, I love this one.
Did you have another strobe on the background?

Click to expand...

I don't recall - I was looking at that second catchlight in the left eye wondering if I didn't have also an umbrella over there, but it could be the bay window too.
I love the dreamy Holywood lighting on the first one, and the really buttery OOF on the second outdoor one - pity the clipped feet though. I might have to try this again!

Blighty said:

I must admit, after looking through Sally Mann's 'Immediate family', I too felt inspired to get an LF. For some reason, probably financial, I never got round to it. I really like the portability and freedom of movement you get with MF and 35mm when photographing kids, but LF stills appeals.

Click to expand...

Funny how some of the best (Sally Mann, Jock Sturges) and worst (Anne Geddes - but maybe she's dumped the Sinars and gone digital now?) children photography has been done in LF these days....

Wow! They're all so good. Great thread....let's see some more.

Love those shots MenacingTourist. Especially the 2nd one.

Here's my latest 4x5 of Sophie, who is very happy to oblige my requests for a still, patient kiddo. This was with a borrowed 152 Ektar 4.7 on my '39 speed graphic. The second shot is the same camera, lens, and model, but in really low light. She's fantastic to work with.

Yes, you do have to work very specifically with the kids to make it work. Really, though, if you take the approach of flattery ("Most kids can't be still enough, but I think just MAYBE you guys might be able to do it. I dunno..... do you think you're big enough?") it works just about every time, often with kids as young as two or three. I haven't done lots of 4x5, but I've done sets of three siblings three times, with success each time.

Wills' experience sounds very like what I do with my kids from time to time. The only point I'd disagree on is the self-cocking shutter: yes, they try to bang away on it as much as possible, but the flip side is that they feel they have done the whole thing. They behave for each other in a way that they never behave for me, and the whole LF fiddle-click-bang thing seems authentic in a way that MF or small cameras never does.

These Dead Link Removed were an early go on Polaroid 55 and a big Verito in front of a Sinar shutter. Since then we've repeated the experience a couple of times, and the results are more than worth the effort.

PS: The mutual portraits were 1/2s @ f8 with a 14" lens, the colour one was 1/8s @f11 with a 250 mm lens. Motion blur (or none) is a nice marker of character in this game.

Alex,
I've found the only way for me to shoot (little) kids in LF without getting totally frustrated is to use a Crown Graphic. I've used it handheld with the built-in RF and got plenty of good shots. I ocassionally use it with flashbulbs, but they learn pretty quickly to run and hide when that thing is mounted. I guess they don't care for the 5 minutes of temporary blindness that follows each click....

I`ve had a few email conversations with Jock Sturges, and I`m sure he doesn`t mind me sharing a few of his "tricks" for shooting people with 8x10.
He is very quick and effective when working. He`s not using a light meter(hasn`t since the 70`s), he has his shutter under full control from behind the camera(memorized) so he don`t need to waste time by going in front for checking his settings. He always use the same lens, so he knows where to put the camera for the framing he wants. He`s using front tilt and swing all the time, as he`s working with apertures between f/8--f/16 (very shallow DOF)
He lubricates the film holder tracks on his Master View with silicone lubricant spray to get the holders in and out quickly, and has a bag of holders hanging on the tripod for easy acess.

He also gave me some ligthing and development info(PM me if anyone is interested in the details), and he`s doing 24 sheets of TXP in a 8x10 tray at the time!

Here`s a little quote that tells how humble(and how many sheets he sometimes shoot in a day) this guy is:

"I carry 30 holders when I am working and some days will reload them twice. Most of the pictures are bad but at least I feel like I am doing something."




But basically he told me to practice(a lot) using your camera, and put the attention where it belongs, on the models and your photographs.

I really do not have a lot to add about how i photograph kids on 8x10 but I have done it a bit. I wanted to share a few of the 8x10 platinum prints I have made of kids.

Ray Bidegain