How to take beautiful photos of children in outdoor scenes? Let’s see the best 15 ideas right now!
The ideas ahead are good for taking photos of one child and for taking photos of many children!
Is your focus to take photos of babies? Awesome! Some of the ideas ahead can be useful for outdoor babies photography too!
You can use a professional camera, or even a camera that has less features than your smartphone’s camera. Either way, this quick guide will show you that getting awesome photos of kids at open spaces is easier than you think!
Not only the place you’re taking photos at is important, but also how you organize the photo scene. Sometimes one single place can be useful for a whole photo album.
Let’s discover great outdoor children photography ideas.
1. Photos in woodlands and green areas
That’s right! Woodlands and green areas are essential for taking photos of kids. Woodlands are lands covered with trees, so anything similar to a forest that’s nearby a city/town or inside the city/town is a woodland.
Green areas can be public spaces (such as parks) or even your home garden! As long as there’s grass or flowers or trees, it’s a green area.
You can benefit a lot from outdoor spaces full of natural green. Each corner of a woodland or a green area is a possible photo scene.
So look for outdoor green spaces near you to take photos of children. And remember to tell the kids to pose in front of every edge of the green area, then you take many photos and decide what’s your favorite later.
That’s actually a very common scenario for outdoor children photography, and many of the following scene ideas can have green areas as background, as you’ll see.
2. Outdoor picnic
Another way of benefiting from public green areas and woodlands for children photography is putting a picnic together, putting the kids in the picnic scene taking many, many photos. This is a very artistic scene! Remember that the children don’t need to be focusing on the camera all the time, especially if they’re surrounded by food! So take a lot of photos and choose your favorites later.
If you’re a beginner photographer or want to learn more about photography, see our post The 6 Best Photography Tips for Beginners.
3. Photos walking on paths
If the kids you’re taking photos of already can walk (in other words, if they’re not babies), another thing you can do is put them to naturally walk on a path (empty of people and vehicles, of course) to take cool photos.
Paths are streets or roads or even trails. They can be anywhere that looks good for taking photos. They’re common inside public green areas and urban landscapes (if you don’t know what urban landscapes are, see idea number 7).
It’s usually at calmer places that this photo scene works better. Remember to move around the kids with the camera and not just stand on the same spot all the time.
Try to make the photos seem as natural as possible, so you don’t need to worry if the kids aren’t looking at the camera all the time, take photos of them when they’re distracted as well!
4. Outdoor photos of children with pets
Similarly to outdoor playing with friends, if the children you’re taking photos of have any pets, like a dog or a cat (or any other), you can include the pets in the photo scene! Just remember to be outdoors, of course.
In this specific photo scenario it would be better for you to stay a little far from the children and let them be with their pets more naturally because it can be kind of difficult to get them to focus on the camera while holding a cute dog puppy, for example.
5. Photos at the beach
Another great place to take photos of kids is at the beach. There you have the sea to use as background as well as nearby vegetation, not to mention the sand ground.
You can put kids to play with beach toys while you take photos of them, as well as tell them to walk freely on the sand ground while you take cool photo photos. Also, consider waiting for the sunset when you’re at the beach because sunlight can beautify your photos a lot.
If your city or town doesn’t have any beaches, it may have natural watercourses, then you should see idea number 14.
6. Photos in playgrounds
Playgrounds are a great outdoor place for taking photos of children. The cool thing about playgrounds is that kids usually feel very comfortable at them, so you can benefit from that. Also, remember to stay a little far from the children in the photo scene while you take their photos, that will result in more natural-looking photos.
7. Photos in urban landscapes
Urban landscape photos are taken in urban places of cities and towns that include a wide urban area in the photo scene. So, a cool idea for outdoor children photography is you taking the kids to a good-looking urban landscape, such as a square, a street that’s usually less crowded, places close to buildings to use as background or even tourist locations.
If you want to discover awesome ideas for taking photos of urban landscapes, see our post 18 Urban Landscape Photography Tips.
Who knows if you may end up combining those tips with children photography and take pretty original photos?
You can also take outdoor photos of children in natural landscapes.
8. Photos in natural landscapes
Natural landscapes are similar to green areas, the difference is that they don’t have urban elements such as buildings, stores, houses or even streets.
But you don’t need to travel to a natural landscape to take photos of children! You can actually find natural landscapes nearby your city/town, as long as there are no urban elements in the photo scene, it’s a natural landscape!
Any corner with mountains or flowers or trees as background can become beautiful photo scenarios, so consider looking for one of those to make awesome outdoor children photography. And always remember to make the photos as natural as possible, not worrying too much about the children looking at the camera all the time!
9. Outdoor playing with soap bubbles
Creating this photo scene will require you to have a soap bubble maker at hand (a.k.a. bubble blower), but the results can be pretty cool! So get one of those toys, go to an open space such as a park or a green area, and take awesome photos of children playing with soap bubbles, they will look pretty artistic.
10. Sunset and sunrise as background
Sunlight can be super useful for outdoor children photography. No matter what open space you’re in, urban or natural, crowded or not, if you use the sunset light or the sunrise light as a background for your photos, it’s going to look amazing! So, benefit from this possibility as much as you can.
11. Outdoor playing with balloons
This photo scene will require one or more balloons, those we see in birthday parties, but the results can be pretty artistic too! So you need to get one or a few balloons (it can also be those shaped as animals or movie characters).
You can also tie the balloons to a cord to help the kids hold them, then you go to an open space such as a public park and take awesome photos of the children playing with balloons. This scene may look better in a green area, but it’s up to you to decide.
12. Outdoor playing with friends
A great scene for outdoor children photography is taking the kids to open spaces to play with friends and take photos of them. Again, remember to stay a little far from the kids just so they act more naturally. You should always combine photos taken closer where the kids are looking at the camera with photos taken far away with the kids more distracted and acting naturally.
13. Outdoor playing in general
In whatever open space you are children photos, you can ask them to play freely, then you take a lot of photos. If the children have a favorite toy like a Teddy Bear or a doll they can be playing with it because this will help with the natural look of the photos. The aim of this scene is for kids to be spontaneous, so don’t worry about them looking at the camera a lot.
14. Natural watercourses as background
A natural watercourse is what its name promises: a natural channel through which water flows. So if your city/town has any lake, river, pond or waterfall, you use it as a background for taking beautiful outdoor children photography.
Natural watercourses can be useful as background for photos because you can take the kids anywhere nearby a natural watercourse and use it as an element to beautify the photos.
If there are any urban elements around (houses, benches, light poles…), that’s fine. Remember that the watercourse is not the focus of your photos, so whatever is around it is acceptable as long as there are children in the photo scene!
15. And, of course: outdoor photos with parents!
The children’s parents can be in the photos of children in any of the previous photo scenes, so remember to have this scene in mind, especially if you’re one of the parents!
The secret is to take photos of children with parents in some photos and then take more photos of the kids alone in the same scene, then you choose the best ones later. If there are other relatives like older siblings, it’s a good idea to include them in the photos too, if that’s possible of course.
Photo editing: the cherry on top!
Awesome! You know how to put together 15 scenes for children photography! You’re ready to make full photo albums now!
Remember that you can use a professional camera, a simpler camera and your smartphone camera as well.
There’s still one thing you can do: beautify even more your outdoor children’s photos by adding some color filter effects to them. Color filters are like Instagram photo effects, and they can give your photos an artistic feel that’s pretty cool! So, give it a try!
To add color filters to your photos, you simply search on the Internet for “free online photo filter”, choose a website and apply filters to your photos.
Now you take some amazing photos!
See our other posts about many Photography Styles.
You can also share your thoughts in the comments below!
