My daughter on the way to the Pancakes on the Plaza event in Santa Fe. Happy 4th to all my US friends.

A few shots from today’s visit to the Rodeo de Santa Fe matinee.

The evenings are better for flattering light, but not so great for a five-year old who’d been playing soccer at 8am.

And I got to wear my cowboy hat, which is quite the big deal for an Englishy-Irishy guy like me.

On Saturday my friend Ned and I got together to explore an idea I’ve been kicking around for a while. ‘Wouldn’t it be great,’ I thought, ‘to help photo enthusiast parents take better photos of their kids?’

I’d bring my stuff over as if it was a shoot I was hired for, but as well as taking photos myself, I’d also help Ned with his images.

So we tried it. The rough plan was this:

• Talk through some of Ned’s photos that he’d sent me in advance to get a base level and establish what sort of help he was looking for.
• Shoot some photos – using Ned’s current camera and the two I’d brought along with me. I’d be offering a running commentary on what I was doing and why, and some pointers for Ned.
• Look at all the photos and talk through which ones worked (and why) and which didn’t.
• Have a lot of fun doing it.

It was barely a plan, but it all worked really well, with the good-natured assistance of his five-year-old daughter Alex.

Some of the help was technical – even on Portrait mode, Ned’s camera wanted to fire the flash too readily, so we moved him to Aperture Priority mode to give him more control.

But a lot more of it was thinking more about what makes a good photograph – watching the light, the background, the subject’s expression (the sort of things I talked about in this post).

We also found places in their house and yard that would be good for future portraits.

Here’s one of Ned’s shots from the session – we were both really happy with it.

I think it’s a great way to give parents some of the skills they need to take great pictures of their kids themselves. I don’t believe in pretending there’s some magic that only pro photographers can conjure to create good images, and I’m keen to share what I’ve learned.

So drop me a line if you’d like to do something similar and you’re in Santa Fe, Albuquerque or thereabouts – I’m still working out the details of how to offer this in the future as a formal alternative to my portrait sessions, but we can definitely sort something out.

Finally, here are couple that I took on the shoot, just to show that Ned wasn’t the only one doing some work.

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