Table of Contents

• Parenting cartoon “How to take powerful video?”
• Dad is the family’s exclusive photographer! Capture your memories with photos and videos!

Parenting cartoon “How to take powerful video?”

Profile
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After working for a design company in Tokyo, he became a freelance illustrator. He is a hard-working father who produces animation, manga, and illustrations, including winning the Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival’s International Short Film Showcase Division Excellence in Animation Award.

Dad is the family’s exclusive photographer! Capture your memories with photos and videos!

Let’s communicate through the camera!

　Although we tend to focus on taking beautiful photos, it is important to know how to look back on the photos you have taken.

　We therefore interviewed Chikara Oyano-Chikara, an education critic and leader of the “Praise Photo Project,” which raises children’s self-esteem through photography, about how to interact with children through photography.

Photographs to increase self-esteem and trust in others

　I have been involved in education for over 35 years, and I am doing what I am doing now to convey the importance of building basic trust, which I feel through my own experiences as a teacher and through talking with many teachers.

　For children, the first stage of building human relationships is “communication with parents. No matter how much praise a child receives from teachers and friends at school, it is the value of the relationship with parents that serves as the base for the child to acquire a sense of self-affirmation and trust in others (trust in others and in the world), which are called basic trust. Daily communication is naturally important to enhance the relationship of trust between children and their parents, but photography plays an even more important role in building that relationship.

Photographs should be in kind, not digital!

　The improved camera capabilities of smartphones have benefited everyone as an easy way to preserve memories. But are your children looking at the pictures you have taken? Have you looked back on your memories while viewing the photos you took with your children? We believe that the best part of photography is savoring the memories. To that end, why not look at the photos on your phone with your child, choose the ones you want to print out and keep, and display the photos you choose in the entryway, bathroom, or other areas of your life’s traffic flow?

　One family I visited when I was a teacher had many pictures of dads and their children displayed on their front porch. They told me that they displayed them to convey their dad’s presence since he was a sailor on a long voyage and they could not see him for a long period of time. Every time the child walked through the front door, he was reminded of his father’s presence and felt loved, leading to the formation of a sense of trust in others.

　Another family displayed pictures of their daily life, such as a child jumping rope, washing the bathtub, or accomplishing something. This child happily talked about the pictures, saying, “I worked really hard at this time.” He said happily, “I worked very hard at that time. Children are always discovering new things every day, and their days are so fast-paced that it is difficult for them to remember the past. However, by having an environment where they can constantly look at photos like this, they can remember how hard they have worked, and they can remember their successes and enhance their sense of self-esteem.

What is the best way to communicate while looking at pictures?

　When communicating with a child over a photo, be aware that you will be asking the child to talk a lot. What did I do well at this moment?” “Why did it work? This will encourage the child to share his or her own impressions. Please make this kind of conversation important.

　Also, the pictures that the child wants to put up and the pictures that the parents want to put up can be a little different. Therefore, instead of parents always choosing the photos to print out, it is a good idea to choose together or have the children choose for you. I believe that displaying photos will also help to improve the relationship between parents and their children, as well as give them the energy to say, “I have done my best in raising my children,” or “I will do my best again tomorrow.

Photography Techniques for Capturing Your Child’s Growth in an Appealing Way

　Although it is now easy to take pictures of children with smartphones, many moms and dads still have trouble taking the right pictures and videos. We asked Yukinari Saito, a professional video and photography photographer for more than 40 years, who also teaches and writes about photography, to share his tips for taking attractive photos of children!

The basic premise is to build trust through communication.

　I think it is a very good thing that the performance of cameras has improved and the hurdles to photography have been lowered. However, no matter how good the camera is, it is people who take the pictures. When it comes to photographing children, we want to bring out their facial expressions and preserve their life-size expressions in our memories.

　This is where it is important to build a trusting relationship with the child. To this end, try to talk a lot during the shoot to bring out the child’s relaxed expression, without being too composed. It is also necessary to shoot them playing apart, but to enhance the sense of the scene, try to shoot them while they are playing together. If you are capturing a conversation with a child, you can capture a natural scene by pointing the camera at the child while yourself making eye contact with the child and repeatedly releasing the shutter.

The basics of photography that you should keep in mind

(1) Camera height should be at the child’s eye level.
　First, be aware that you should take pictures from the same eye level as the child. This can be done regardless of the age of the child, and by changing the angle according to the child’s height and condition, you can take pictures that have a realistic feel to them. In particular, if you want to take a picture of a child crawling, it is necessary to take the picture while keeping the camera at the very ground level, not from above. If you photograph a child from an adult’s perspective, the child’s head will appear too large.

(2) Capture the child in the center of the camera.
　As is true for both photos and videos, basically, capture the child in the center of the camera. In video, you will be at the mercy of the child’s quick movements and will be out of frame, but at that time, you should break off and stop. If you follow the object around out of frame, the video will look funny when you look back at it later. Also, do not move the camera to keep it from going out of level, but move your own body to get a less blurry video.

(3) Separate compositions
　It is not easy to take a dynamic photo with a smartphone. What we recommend is to take pictures in separate states. For example, if you are taking a picture of a person running, instead of taking a picture of the whole body, dare to take a picture of only the lower half of the body or only the upper half. If you want to take a picture of a person climbing a tree, take a picture from a lower angle and a side angle.

　Many people feel that if they try to capture all of these in a single still image, they end up with a photo with little movement, and feel that it is not enough. If you are going to capture it in a photo rather than a video, be aware of this kind of cutaway.

How to take memorable photos

(1) Take a picture of your crying face.
　When a child is crying, moms and dads tend to focus on getting the child to stop crying, but when they look back at the photos of their children, the crying faces allow them to reflect on many aspects of the child’s growth. This kind of photography is possible because of the ease of the smartphone. You probably don’t take many pictures unless you are conscious of it, so why not take this opportunity to do so?

(2) Anticipate the child’s movements!
　When trying to take pictures of children playing, it is easy to end up taking pictures from behind or from the side because children tend to move quickly. By anticipating what the child is going to do next, you can take pictures from the front. If you are worried that you are taking too many photos of the back, you may want to be aware of this part of the program. Similarly, for athletic events, it is important to have the program properly in mind beforehand. Knowing where and how your child is going to move is the basis of photography.

We have found that the photos and videos we normally take without much thought actually play a major role in our children’s growth.
Please be aware that the camera is not intended to take pictures, but rather to be a tool for deepening communication between parents and children, and try to use it effectively.