No doubt we’ve all taken a photo of our child at bath time. Bath time, after all, is such a ritual in childhood, whether it be capturing giggles and laughter among the toys and bubbles or the amusement of foam beards and punky shampooed hair, as parents, it is likely that at some point, most of us have wanted to capture the moment. I have taken many such portraits of my children at bath time over the years. The very first portrait I took of my daughter in the bath was a crop much like the one above of her little three month old face surrounded by a sea of bubbles so only her face was visible (she was being held securely at the time by another adult I hasten to add!).
I had no intention to photograph her on the night the portraits below were taken, but as she lay so serenely in the bath with her hair flowing in the water around her, I was so captivated by the image of her that I had to grab my camera and document the moment. I used my Nikon DSLR and stood on the bath directly above her, balancing very carefully so as not to take an unwanted dip myself(!) with the camera strap securely around my neck (an absolute health and safety must when standing over any child or person to photograph them) and worked with the ambient light in the room. In situations like this where you are simply capturing a moment, you don’t have time for fancy lighting set ups and flash would most likely have killed these images so it was a case of pushing up the ISO on the camera and using the widest aperture available to let as much light into the camera as possible.
While it is preferable to have a DSLR, you don’t necessarily need an expensive professional camera to get these type of images of your own child however. As the days are getting longer we are given more natural light to play with which will make your life much easier for taking photographs at bath time and will mean that even an iPhone can do the job!
Not all children will be as co-operative as my daughter, who is used to being photographed and who has modelled for me regularly in the past. If this is the case with your child and they are unwilling to lay in the bath in an ‘ethereal’ pose, then simply document them playing instead with as little interaction from yourself as possible to really capture them naturally in the moment. I always tend to photograph my children from the waist up when taking candids of them in the bath or I make sure there are plenty of bubbles in the bath to cover their modesty. I do this mainly to spare any future blushes when they are older and when I will likely get the family album out to reminisce over their childhood! These portraits were taken in a matter of minutes before my daughter got bored and wanted to get out of the bath, so if you do manage to get your child to lay down for you like this, it is likely you will have to work very quickly to capture the moment, such is the boredom threshold of a child!
Good luck and look forward to getting creative!
Images were shot using a Nikon D750 at ISO 10,000 at F4 at around 70mm