Enter A Child Photography Contest – A Fun Way To Improve Your Skills
August 18, 2009
None of us need an excuse to photograph our kids. They are the reason in themselves; from cute babyhood when every smile just has to be recorded, to the emerging characters of toddlers and the gap tooth grins of growing children. Sometimes it’s nice though to have an extra reason to put new photographic skills into practice; to take photos of your kids for a specific purpose. If you’re intent on improving your photography skills then it’s a great idea to think about entering a child photography contest.
There are lots of cute kid photo contests about. Online you can probably choose from hundreds. If you look carefully you’ll find that some are genuine contests with experienced expert judges and worthwhile prizes, while others are barely disguised attempts at marketing products, with the products themselves as prizes. Others will offer prizes of say a voucher for a canvas print.
It’s up to you to decide what your priorities are when you decide to enter one of these photo contests. If you’re just doing it for fun and to improve your photography, then the prizes aren’t important, but it does make sense to choose a contest where some sort of photographic quality standards are used in the selection process. Look for contests that explain their selection criteria. Photos may be short-listed by experts and then voted for by the public, or judged completely by a panel of photo industry professionals.
Once you’ve picked a contest that you’d like to enter, have a look at previous winning photos and see what makes them stand out. Besides the cuteness of the child’s face and expression, look at the light; often soft natural daylight falling from one side makes for a photo with winning appeal. How are the kids dressed in the winning photos? Often simple but pretty clothes enhance the cute kid factor. Probably the most important element in a child portrait is the eyes. Look at any portrait and you’ll notice that the eyes are what draw you in. So when you’re taking photos of your child make sure that you get their eyes in sharp focus so that you can catch the sweetness of their expression.
Most photo contest have monthly divisions and then the winning photos from those go into an annual contest which has the grand prizes. This means that you can enter every month to stand a better chance of winning. Challenging yourself to produce a great picture to submit every month is a great way to add motivation to work on your photography skills. Start with a basic online course and use the photo contests as a reason to keep photographing your kids and trying out new ways of using your camera. After all, you already know that your child is the cutest kid in the world. The challenge is for your photo skills to show that to the world!
You Don’t Have To Enter A Beautiful Baby Photo Contest To Have A Fun Modeling Shoot.
July 31, 2009
This weekend someone sent me a link to YouTube, which of course led me to click on more video clips. It is like the perfect pick-me-up, a one minute video clip can have you laughing for hours. My friends and I still chuckle about Charlie Bit My Finger and we all saw if for the first time over a year ago. One of the clips I just saw was the winner of a beautiful baby photo contest bouncing through her photo shoot and I was inspired.
My son is only a year old, so I am currently doing mostly paparazzi photos of him. I take pictures of whatever he is doing and try to catch great shots because he is at that age where posing him, or saying “Give me a smile” is a lost cause. I realized that I missed the fun I used to have with my niece and nephew when I babysat. So having a few days free, I packed up Aiden and drove to New York to surprise my family.
Everyone was thrilled when we showed up, since we don’t visit very often. I got my niece and nephew really riled up and we all piled into the play room because it was raining. At ages two and three, they are thrilled to be the center of attention. My mom and I both got our cameras out and started taking pictures of the little wild ones.
Lately Aiden’s favorite activity is crawling under and over anything so unsurprisingly he started going under the art table and peeking out before he’d loop out and do it again. Dylan and Madie grabbed all their new toys to show me and started posing with them. Dylan, all boy, all the time, started hunting imaginary animals with a squirt gun which at some point turned into a whole cowboy ensemble.
Aiden watching his cousins
Madie started by mimicking her brother, but soon added heels and hats from her toy box and tried with all her might to get her swimsuit on over her jeans. I did little prompting, I just sang songs with them and asked what they were trying to be and went with it. It was a cross between a New York photo shoot and show and tell and it was thoroughly entertaining.
Just like the little YouTube model, the kids were having a great time in their element, and Dylan and Madie were able to give me very cute, very real poses. I printed a trio of peeking pictures before I left; Dylan peeking over his gun, Madie from under her hat, and Aiden from beneath the easel which made the most adorable collage. If your little ones are old enough to ham it up, grab your camera and give them an hour of your attention. You will probably end up with tons of contest worthy photos, even if that’s not your intention, it’s not a big leap from pretending to model to actually modeling.
Your Cutest Baby Pictures Could Win Big in a Photo Contest
July 28, 2009
Every Mom knows that her baby is the cutest baby ever, we don’t need to win a photo contest to prove that to ourselves! Submitting photos of our kids to some of the top online photo contests can be fun though and, more to the point in this uncertain economy, gives you great chances of winning cash prizes. Cash that can start off a savings account for your child and give him a head start in life
One of the biggest online photo contests offers monthly cash prizes, but also an option to enter their annual contest, with a top prize of a $25,000 college tuition fund. Their biggest draw card is that the contests are judged by photography industry professionals, so if you like the idea of your child modeling for photo shoots and earning an income before they’re even out of diapers this could be a great starting point!
The photographic industry is always needing child models. Just think of all the products that feature gorgeous babies and kids in their advertisements and packaging. Casting agents need a constant supply of photogenic babies and very often they look to high profile photo contests to snap up new talent.
Joining the child modeling circuit is not for every baby and mom, but can be great fun if you are both sociable, like to get out and about and meet new people. There will be a round of castings where you’ll meet other moms and babies and have time to chat while you wait to be seen. If your baby is chosen for a job, then you’ll have all the excitement of the photo shoot in a professional studio. You’ll be able to keep a scrapbook of professionally shot pictures of your baby and also start up a special savings account for their earnings. There’s nothing like starting a college fund early!
When our first two kids were babies, we were perfectly placed for them to have careers as child models. We ran a London photographic studio that was hired out to magazines for fashion shoots. Models, casting agents and photographers came through all day long. But apart from the photos that my photographer husband took of them, they only once featured in a professional fashion shoot. The photographer was a friend of ours who they knew, but they were just too shy and didn’t really like being surrounded by the bustle of a shoot, with stylists brushing their hair and arranging clothes. After that we kept them out of the spotlight and just carried on taking lots of photos of them ourselves.
So think about your child’s temperament if you’re considering child modeling for them. Outgoing children who love being the center of attention and thrive on new environments will love it, shy stay at home babies won’t. My daughter, once an unwilling, red-cheeked-from-teething, baby model, is now nine and wants to be a photographer herself. She obviously always knew which side of the camera lens she should be!
Whichever type your child is, enter their photos in a cute kid contest anyway. You can enter every monthly contest for free and only pay an entry fee to enter the big prize, once a year contest, if you want to. If you’re lucky and win a cash prize you can start building up a savings account for them, to start them on their future careers one day!
Child Photographer
The Perfect Child Photography Contest Is All About The Photo.
July 20, 2009
Have you ever looked into a child photography contest, only to be turned off by the thought of pitting your child’s adorable smile against another’s? If you look past the very first pop up of your web search you will come across cute baby contests that agree all babies are beautiful. The real entrant in the contest is you and it is your photography skills and creativity that are judged.
Because of the lure of prizes and parental pride contests to find the cutest children for advertisements are flooded with photos. I have entered more than one and while there is no doubt that my son is beautiful, for some reason he has yet to win. While I scouted out even more contests to enter his winning smile in I came upon ones that are all about the photos.
I’m sure that you have caught your child in some adorable moment, peeking around the corner, or wearing a beard of bubbles in the bath. You look at the photo and you see the perfect image. If you have staged the perfect picture, or more impressively, caught it by chance, then you should enter in one of these photo contests.
With judges that range from professionals to your peers, even offering you a vote, there is much to be had. Not only can you rise to the photography challenge, but you can look around and be inspired by other people’s clever ideas and poses. I often peruse other’s photos and find shots that I am eager to duplicate and make my own.
When Anne Geddes’ work first debuted, I was one of millions popping their own little ones into flower pots and firing off dozens of pictures. This past Christmas I photographed my son in a drywall bucket, in a t-shirt with the family’s logo on it. My father and grandfather, the heads of the business, were thrilled with the quick spin on an old pose. My father dubbed the photo his “Little Legacy” and taped a copy to his clipboard to show off when he gives estimates.
While I am a fan of beautiful baby contests, entering my son with the conviction that he will one day be on the cover of one of my parenting magazines, I find a certain satisfaction in the photo contests. I take pride in overcoming shutter lag to get the perfect shot of my son popping out of the water at the pool. I am thrilled when I choose just the right ISO to capture a low light photo of my baby sleeping without it being overcome with graininess. The contests appeal to all my photographic sensibilities, give them a peek and they will be calling you too.
Competitive Parenting
June 25, 2009
The contest of choice for new parents is the beautiful baby contest. Having a baby makes you feel like the contestants of Survivor and Amazing Race have nothing on you. Twenty hours of labor preceded and followed by months of sleep deprivation doesn’t compare with eating a couple of bugs or taking a zip line across a canyon. But with your new little one in tow you won’t find time to do any of those now seemingly simple things. However, your greatest accomplishment is right there riding on your hip.
Those six minutes of uninterrupted naptime you are promised each day is exactly enough time to enter a baby contest. In fact you will probably have two or three minutes left over to squeeze in a shower. You just take a picture of your adorable child, that is probably already on your computer, upload it with your name, email and maybe a caption. Some are free; others have a low entrance fee that is compensated for by gifts.
I’ve done a lot of things in my life, even some that I am very proud of, but my ten month old miracle is by far my finest accomplishment. His smile lights up the room. I have entered him in several beautiful baby contests as much for his sake as mine. The prizes are child oriented like scholarships which would help his college fund immensely.
There is another draw to the contests; talent agents use them to scout children for advertisers. I was just notified that Pottery Barn is looking for child models this month. That could be my child or yours. It is just human nature to compare everything. You eagerly await your doctor to tell you what percentile your child falls into and you glance at the other kids in the playgroup to see who is bigger.
Now you don’t even need to leave the house to check out other kids and take pride in the fact that your baby is cuter. You can judge others from the comfort of your own home while professionals are judging your little one. As your baby grows and becomes even more beautiful you can keep entering. The competition is calling, don’t wait to enter.
Baby Photo Contest Entry
Christy
Beautiful Baby? Enter Here
June 5, 2009
Last week I caught the baby photo contest bug. I took a few pictures of my nine month old son and thought there can’t possibly be a cuter baby. Having seen an advertisement in a magazine for a beautiful baby contest I decided to take action. I soon realized that one contest was the tip of the iceberg. There are dozens out there and I was addicted.
Of course, I am a firm believer that my son is the cutest. I’m sure you believe the same of your child and how could it not be true. However, I thought I have the advantage. I’ve been a photographer for years. I know how to pick the great pictures from the good ones and I know how to take them. I set up a photo shoot for my son and caught every wonderful expression that he has ever had and a few new ones. As I uploaded my photos I tried to separate the mother from the photographer and chose some winning entries.
Two minutes on the internet and I discovered that there are dozens of baby photo contests to choose from. After a moment’s deliberation I decided why choose. I had dozens of pictures and most of the contests are free or very reasonable. The gambler in me jumped up and told me to play the odds. If one contest is good, many are better. I entered as many contests as my son’s nap time allowed, each one making me more excited, more hopeful.
The next day, preoccupied by life, the contests were barely in the back of my mind. Then I got an email telling me that my son’s photo had been viewed by a talent professional and encouraging me to upload more photos. The excitement came rushing to the surface again and more photos made their way onto the internet. I started checking whenever I had the chance. Like Facebook or Myspace it had become an addiction.
There is really no downside. Prizes range from a month’s diapers to college tuition. You get to show off your beautiful baby from the comfort of your home. Some even give you gifts for entering. What have you got to lose?
Enter today. I’ll see you there.
Christy
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