Any tips for photographing autistic kids? | Autism PDD
We sing, sing and sing. It really works for ds.
We have the same problems with fleeting or stiff smiles and eye contact that's averted at the last second. I mostly just take multiple shots with my digital, but he gets tired of it quickly.
When my younger NT son was little, he liked to answer color questions, so I'd say "what color is my hat?" and he'd at least look at me. Maybe asking questions related to your child's special interest would light up his face.
One photographer's trick I've heard of is putting some transparent tape on the child's hand to get them to sit still. You won't get a smile, but a contemplative pose gazing at folded hands (ie looking down while one hand is trying to remove tape from the other).
A social story is an obvious solution, but I'm afraid I don't have a sample (yet).
Good luck with everything!
I don't know about you guys, but 98% of the pictures of my son do not have him looking at the camera. I do have some where he is looking at the camera, but I have very few where he is looking at the camera AND smiling. I love photograpy, and don't mind that he doesn't look at the camera most of the time, because I like candid style shots anyway. However, I needed to get a picture of him for a social skills group choice board thing and remembered how impossible it is to get him to look straight at me and smile. ugh. I ended up cropping out one of him standing against the fence (needed a neutral background to help the other kids in the class) with his hair wet from the sprinklers. I really hope the wet hair didn't mess up the others, but it was the best one I had without a distracting background.
Any tricks you guys use?
My Ds used to be like that. He used to have a scared look or disregard the camera. We just kept taking and taking and telling him what to do. Now he is a pro infront of the camera. I guess practice did make perfect in his case but oh my gosh how long it took. So hang in there and keep on snapping just prompt nicely along the line. Good Luck.
Concernedpa.
Is there a special toy that cracks him up? We used to have a giggling bunny that my son loved. We would hold up the bunny to get his attention and the sight of it made him smile.
We have also used a long duster to tickle our kids in order to get a smile. I got the idea from a photographer.
strange smile (that looks nothing like a real smile) that some of our kids do.
I, like shelley, delete at least a dozen photos to get one good one. I'm
looking into splurging (even though it's not very prudent of me...
) on
the new Nikon D-40, which claims to eliminate the lag time most digital
cameras have between clicking and capturing the image. It's pricey, but I
feel like since my beautiful kiddo can't "pose" like more typical kids, I have a
better chance of catching his natural moments for posterity.
If anyone knows of a cheaper model with similar lag-time advances, I'd LOVE
to know!
i started having problem taking pics ater my son was 3. he use to photograph fine since he was a baby. now he is 4 and its hard to get a nice pic of him and the right pose.
let me show you a few pics that he gave me trouble... some are during the shoot we took at jc penney's, some at home.
u can see how he puts his face when we want a pic. thats why he is in shy mode, tahts what i call it. he snugs his lip inside and has open mouth.
I probably need to figure out a social story and just keep working on it. This camera has a lot less lag than my first one did, but if you are indoors or it has to work to focus, it either won't respond, or takes too long. Digital cameras are a blessing though..you can take 200 pictures and just pick out the best ones. I can't imagine how insanely frustrating (and/or expesive) it would be with regular film cameras.
I don't think I realized just how challenging it was until his sister, the social butterfly, came along.
Marilyna, I think you're right about adding it to the criteria[QUOTE=marilyna]I think they ought to add this to the list of warning signs -- all the photos show your kid looking away from the camera or the back of his head! Now that I know my son is ASD, I can understand why I haven't been able to get good pictures since he was around 1 or 1 1/2.
[/QUOTE]
I TOTALLY agree with this. It was about that time the photo quality started going down for us too.
Spongebob doesn't do it for us, but put him on the computer with a game and I can get photos of him laughing and smiling. I turned his computer sideways so I could get photos of him easier. I wonder if people ever notice that the background is always the same in the photos of him smiling. lol.
I do know that making a loud noise, which works great for most kids, can cause him to shrink instead of look.
I am really thankful that one of the JCPenneys in town has a photographer who is the mom of an older autistic boy. She works super fast, does joint compressions in between shots, and is just fabulous with him. In a funny note, some of our pictures of our two kids have him smiling and my daughter, the easy to photograph one, looking confused and not particularly happy. I had to laugh at the irony of that.
I just wish I could reproduce what she is able to do there a little easier. Maybe it is just experience though.
I think they ought to add this to the list of warning signs -- all the photos show your kid looking away from the camera or the back of his head! Now that I know my son is ASD, I can understand why I haven't been able to get good pictures since he was around 1 or 1 1/2.
I can get a good smile by having someone tickle him good while I take the picture. It's hard to get the picture with only him in it, but the smiles are fabulous.
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