Kids Photoshoot Ideas: 10 Creative Children’s Photo Shoot Tips

Tips for the Right Camera Settings in Child Photography

The right camera settings depend entirely on what kind of photos you want to take, what the lighting conditions are, and of course your own personal taste.

That said, here are some rough guidelines to get you started:

• Your shutter speed should never drop below 1/80 — photos blur fast when kids are moving. The exception is a sleeping baby, where you can brace your arm or use a tripod.

• Get to know how your camera handles noise. Indoors, you’ll need higher ISO values to avoid dark, muddy shots. Budget cameras can start showing grain as early as ISO 800, while professional cameras can handle ISO 1600 or higher and still produce sharp, clean images. It really comes down to your sensor — just experiment and see.

• Always open your aperture as wide as possible. f/1.4 or f/1.8 is great for children’s portraits because it gives you those soft, smooth transitions between subject and background.

If terms like aperture, shutter speed, and ISO are new to you, don’t worry — this article focuses on the creative side of things rather than the technical details.

Creative Kids Photoshoot Ideas You Can Try at Home

What’s the best way to get kids to cooperate during a shoot?

Over the years, we’ve developed and tested all kinds of approaches. And honestly, it’s easier than you’d think — kids genuinely get excited about the simplest things in the world.

Here are some of our favorite photo shoot ideas for kids that we use ourselves in family and children’s shoots.

Photographing Kids Under a Blanket

It sounds tricky, but it really isn’t. Toddlers love playing under blankets — and this lets you kill two birds with one stone: laughing faces and a genuinely unique photo idea!

Just toss the blanket over their heads, pull it back off a few seconds later without warning, and snap the shot at the same time. The surprise effect is perfect.

Alternatively, you can crawl under the blanket yourself and shoot from right there.

If you do, use the brightest, thinnest blanket you can find — or a bed sheet — so there’s still enough light to work with underneath it.

Being close to a window that lets light fall onto the blanket makes things even easier for your camera.

Try handing the kids a flashlight too. It creates fantastic light effects on their faces!

Another option: build a fort out of chairs and blankets. That gives you more room to move around underneath. Same rule applies: the closer the window and the lighter the blanket, the better!

Family Photos Jumping on the Bed

For seriously action-packed kids’ photos, let them jump on the bed.

Caution: If there are multiple children, scatter a few cushions on the floor so nobody gets hurt.

Kneel beside the bed and shoot from below as they jump — the photos will look even more dynamic. Don’t be afraid to try different positions too. There are really no limits here!

Our tip: Include an adult who throws a child onto the bed. If you kneel on the other side so the child is essentially flying toward you — and you focus on them — you’ll get an awesome action shot!

Photographing Kids While Baking

When it comes to playing with food, no kid can resist.

Grab some flour and baking powder and bake a cake together. Kids love kneading dough and getting covered in ingredients — and they’ll be so focused on what they’re doing that you can photograph them completely undisturbed.

Don’t be afraid to move in close, switch up your angle, or place bowls and ingredients in the foreground with the child in focus behind them. It makes for really great composition.

Running Toward the Camera

If you have several kids who are at least three years old, organize a race. Something along the lines of “whoever reaches the camera first wins” — kids always go for that!

Our tip: Have the kids line up at the invisible starting line and start shooting right then. They’ll rarely stand so nicely and attentively side by side as they do before the starting signal — and you can get all of them in sharp focus with a wide aperture.

One more tip: While they’re running toward you, fire off as many shots as possible. Use burst mode if your camera supports it.

Including Candles in the Shot

These photos are obviously perfect for the Christmas season, but you can work candles into creative kids photoshoot ideas at any time of year.

Candles hold a special fascination for children. They stare at the flame in wonder, the flame casts a warm, soft light on their faces — and they stay still long enough for you to get the shot. Perfect conditions!

Our tip: Shoot with a very short shutter speed — that gives you a beautifully dark background with only the candle-lit faces visible.

Child Photography with Bubbles

Babies, toddlers, school-age kids — bubbles always work. They don’t just put kids in a great mood; they also make for beautiful compositional elements in your shots.

Since it’s nearly impossible to blow bubbles and take photos at the same time, it’s worth picking up a bubble machine. You can find one for around 20 euros on Amazon, and it’s a guaranteed hit with kids.

That way you can relax and focus on photographing while the kids chase bubbles around.

Note: Use manual focus here — autofocus tends to lock onto the bubbles floating between the camera and your subject.

Children's Photos with Water

Especially in summer, a photo shoot in the garden with water is a super fun idea. It puts kids of all ages in exactly the right mood for great photos.

Whether it’s a kiddie pool, a garden hose, or water balloons — combined with reflective sunlight and laughing faces, you can get some truly beautiful shots.

The same rule applies here: autofocus can lock onto the wrong thing when water droplets are floating between the camera and the subject, so manual focus is the better choice.

Children's Photos Among Plants

For family portraits especially, some of the most beautiful spots are found outdoors. It doesn’t have to be a dramatic mountain backdrop — a few flowering bushes or plants work just fine.

Really stunning photos come together when your subjects are positioned among plants at different distances from the camera. Focus on their faces and you’ll get varying degrees of blur in the surrounding plants — it looks seriously beautiful.

Children's Photos on the Bed

Throw a light-colored blanket over the bed, lay the kids down on it, and photograph from above. It sounds simple — and can actually be a little tricky with young toddlers — but it’s absolutely worth it.

Our tip: The less pattern the blanket has, the better. And don’t be afraid to scrunch it up a bit — it adds a sense of movement to the image.

This approach is especially great for sibling photos or mom-dad-child shots.

It’s also easier to shoot with a wide aperture here, since all the faces are at the same level — so it’s much less likely that one of them will end up out of focus.

Photographing by the Window

A window is always a great location for indoor shoots — and it opens up all kinds of creative kids photo ideas. Natural light makes it so much easier to get beautiful results!

For something really different, try shooting through wet glass — for example when it’s raining and you photograph your kids from outside through the window. And if it’s not raining, you can always wet the glass yourself.

Alternatively, position yourself next to your child and capture their reflection in the window glass.

You can also get stunning shots by placing your subjects in front of the window and shooting so that a silhouette is created — for example when your child is looking out the window and you photograph them from behind, or when a parent or grandparent is holding the baby in their arms.

Now that you have a range of children’s photoshoot ideas to work with, here are a few more tips on equipment and composition.

The Right Equipment for Your Children’s Photo Shoot

First of all: there’s no single “right” setup for photographing children, because every photographer works according to their own taste. That said, certain lenses and camera features will simply help you take better family photos.

Which cameras are best suited for child photography?

You can take family photos with any camera — DSLR, mirrorless system camera, or compact camera. With a system camera and interchangeable lenses, though, you have much more creative freedom and can work more flexibly with light.

If you’re specifically looking to buy a camera for family photos, make sure it has these features:

• Burst mode: When photographing kids running around, burst mode is a huge advantage — it lets you capture fast-moving children in rapid succession so you can pick the best frame afterward.
• A tilting and rotating monitor: This makes it easy to shoot from above — for example when your kids are lying on the bed. You can hold the camera high above your head and still see exactly what you’re shooting. Same goes for low-angle shots from below.
• Fast autofocus: Kids move quickly, and when a moment is perfect, it can be gone in less than a second. Fast autofocus is seriously important here!

Are your kids already showing an interest in photography themselves and don’t just want to stand in front of the camera? Then our article on the best cameras for kids might be just the thing.

Which lenses should you use for a children’s photo shoot?

For children’s photos, prime lenses are definitely the best choice.

Prime lenses are almost always very fast. They let you shoot even in poor lighting conditions, and with a wide-open aperture you can play beautifully with background blur. When buying, look for a lens with a maximum aperture of f/1.8 or even f/1.4.

For specific lens recommendations by camera manufacturer, check out these articles:

Make the Most of Daylight When Shooting Indoors

Not everyone has a garden, and the weather doesn’t always cooperate. So family photos often end up being taken indoors.

Shooting indoors is always a bit more challenging than shooting outside — your camera has to work with less light. So what’s the solution?

Get as close to the windows as possible and use daylight! Natural light creates a really special mood in photos and is simply ideal for children’s and family portraits. Personally, I almost never use lamps.

Move the crib under the window for your photo session, or set your toddler down with their building blocks near the balcony door.

Our tip: Natural light isn’t always the same. Avoid the midday hours when the sun casts harsh shadows on faces. Also experiment with sheer curtains — they create a beautifully soft, diffused light!

Composition Tips for Children’s Photography

Finally, here are a few important things to keep in mind when it comes to composition.

The right clothing

Photos look most harmonious when everyone is wearing complementary colors. This might sound like a lot of preparation, but it really isn’t.

For example, a mother in a gray top holding a baby in a white onesie — that’s already a great combination. Or two kids in a purple dress and a blue dress respectively. You get the idea.

Matching colors are simply more pleasing to the eye.

One thing that should never appear in any portrait: logos and graphics on clothing. They distract from what matters and just don’t look good.

The right background

Even though your subject is the main focus, always keep the background in mind.

If the background is cluttered with furniture and random details — like a bookshelf packed with different objects and colors — it creates visual chaos in the photo.

The tidier the background, the better the portrait, because it directs all attention to your subject.

That said, the background shouldn’t be completely empty either: a plain white wall would just be boring.

If you’re planning to shoot at home, take a look around beforehand and find the corners that work well for portraits. Then you can use those same spots again and again!

Don’t be afraid to decenter your subject

Your subject doesn’t always have to be in the center of the frame. Quite the opposite — in my photos, subjects are rarely centered!

It simply makes the image more interesting.

The best guide for this is the classic rule-of-thirds grid, which you can display in the viewfinder or on the screen of many cameras.

Key elements — like a face — should ideally fall on the intersection points of the grid lines. It brings real harmony to the image.