During the first year of his life, I tried very hard to capture him at least once every month or two because of how fast his features changed. After his second birthday, my goal now is to capture him under high quality conditions twice a year. When his rate of growth slows a little more I plan to reduce the frequency down to about a once a year minimum where I’ll capture him under quality light… If he’ll let me. 

The portraits featured in this post are what I call “studio style” portraits. I capture these “studio style” portraits on location for families in Sonoma County. If you want to learn more about my requirements for on location studio style portrait sessions, you can check out this post to see how much space I need if you want me to capture portraits like these for your kid.

Kid’s Portraits in Sonoma County

One of my primary goals when I capture these kinds of children’s portraits is to try and future proof them as best as I can. I don’t want these portraits to be dated by some fleeting trend that makes them embarrassing as time goes on (like 80’s glamor photos or something).

To ensure timelessness, it’s important to make sure children are lit with classical light patterns. Sometimes I get really fancy with this idea like I did with these Hollywood style portraits I did for my son 2 years ago. For this set though, I chose to keep things simple with a one light set up. So although these portraits aren’t as elaborately lit, I’ll bet that they’ll still age well over time. This is because the light pattern is classic, and is still prominently used in movies made today. 

In addition to classic lighting, another way I like to future proof children’s portraits is to photograph them sans clothes. This sounds strange at first, but you’ll notice that both in these photos and the other Hollywood style portraits mentioned earlier that he’s just wearing some shorts or his diaper.

The reason for this is because clothes are the easiest way to visually date photos. When I go back and look at these portraits 20 or even 30 years from now, it will be much harder to tell what era these photos were captured in because there aren’t any clothes to date the photo by the fashion of today.

The idea is that great photos taken in the 30’s are still great photos today. My primary goal when I capture portraits of my son is to not hate what I captured as time goes on and styles change. Capturing portraits of him while he’s young like this is a fleeting moment in time and not something I can go back redo even a year from now. This is why I try my best to capture these portraits as cleanly and as timelessly as possible.

Children’s Portrait Collage Frame