Portraits
We all love looking at photographs of our children and seeing their development over the years but (deleted random comma here) there are also benefits for our kids themselves. Did you know it can boost our children’s confidence? Psychologists and experts have done some work in recent decades exploring the link between photography and self confidence.
There was a revealing study conducted in 1975 with a group of fourth graders at a Murfreesboro, Tenn. school. The study was conducted by Jerry Fryrear of Tulane University and Mary Ammerman with Murfreesboro City Schools.
What The Study Discovered
The children were selected from a set of test results indicating they had self-esteem scores below the median score of all the fourth-grade students. These chosen students participated in a carefully set-up study over the course of five-weeks.
During those five weeks, the children took polaroid instant photos of themselves with provided cameras in a variety of assigned poses, compositions and expressing various emotions. The children worked with the printed images of themselves and created scrapbooks once a week over those five weeks.
Testing of the students and teachers at the conclusion of the five weeks revealed a significant increase of 37 percent in the students’ average self-esteem behaviors as seen by their teachers versus a control group which showed just a 10 percent increase on those same scores.
I love working on family shoots, check out some examples of my portrait photography with children and commercial portraits.