Spring Portraits of the Kids

Two of Tamron's resident moms describe how they captured their own daughters in intimate seasonal photo shoots.

Article By Jennifer Gidman

Images by Stephanie Elie & Liz Huston

Child’s Play With the Tamron SP 17-50mm VC

For the spring shoot with her daughter, Stephanie Elie used the SP 17-50mm VC lens in her quest for interesting angles and effective compositional elements to highlight the season. "Normally I have fixed-aperture lenses, but I love the 17-50 because I could get really close shots of her and then, if I wanted to go wide, I could get her and more of the background as well," she says. "I have a cropped-sensor camera, so for me, the 30mm is really like 50mm, and the 50mm is really like 80mm. It's perfect for what I wanted to do."

Elie likes using bright colors in her photos, so her daughter's personal clothing preference blended right in with Elie's spring theme. "She just happens to have a lot of brightly colored clothing -- I wanted contrasting colors so everything wasn't blending in," she explains. "We went outside onto the grass, and the green just reflected beautifully off of what she was wearing."

Getting her subject to ham it up wasn't hard ("my daughter loves the camera"), but Elie still wanted to hunt until she found just the right angle for a truly unique spring portrait. "For one shot, I was down low on the ground with her, just playing around in the grass," she says. "For the other shot, I simply had her hold a bunch of flowers and smell them. Those both came out really nice."

Elie, who took these portraits in the early evening around 6 p.m., shot both images at 1/60th of a second at 160 ISO, F/4.0. "I usually try to keep the lens at around 35mm to 50mm," she says. "I used the Vibration Compensation (VC) feature to really help me keep everything stable. I also recommend keeping your camera stable with your arms if possible to make sure the images come out a little sharper. I was on the ground with her, so that definitely helped!"

Making Memories With the Tamron 90mm F/2.8 Macro

For Liz Huston, tapping into an annual tradition is her way of capturing the most beautiful spring portraits of her daughter. "Every spring, my daughter and I plant something new," she explains. "Sometimes it's flowers, often it's herbs, once it was a tree - this year it was lilies."

Huston chose to play up the nostalgia aspect by using the 90mm macro lens. "That lens is perfect for this type of shoot, because I can get in close but from a safe distance, so I don't feel like I'm infringing on her personal space," she says. "Plus I love that shallow depth-of-field when using a large aperture (I shot F/2.8 for most of these shots) and those blurred, soft edges. People really respond to that because there's no confusion for your eye - you're told exactly what to look at."

The 90mm was perfect for the detail shots of the lily bulbs and garden spades, but it also came in handy when Huston wanted to take a nice portrait of her daughter. "I wanted a clear photo, but I didn't have another lens on hand and I wanted to get as much of her as possible in the image," she says. "So I bumped it up to F/5.6 right as the light was starting to set behind the houses, at around 3:45. It was a beautiful highlight effect on her blonde hair."

Because her daughter has entered those awkward tween years where she's not always comfortable in front of the camera, Huston found she was able to use the 90mm to help put her daughter at ease. "In one shot, I selectively focused on her right eye," she says. "When I was doing it, she said, 'What are you doing, you're so close to me!' I just said, 'Your lashes are so long and your eyes are so beautiful,' and she instantly relaxed. That's when I took the shot. I'm so happy I got great memories to cherish for years to come."

To see more spring portraits in this month's Mom-to-Mom exhibit, go to MyPhotoExhibits.com.