Touch is one of my favorite ways to capture the affection and love between family members. This week’s prompt gives some ideas on how to incorporate hands and hand-holding into your family photoshoots, for photos filled with connection.
Connecting hands: sweet prompts for parents and children to show connection
This prompt gives ideas for one-on-one photos with one parent and one child, and can be used up to large groups, to emphasize relationships. There’s heaps of room for a variety of shots with just a few simple instructions, because you can shoot tight on the details, then zoom out to capture the whole interaction.
How to use this photo pose prompt
During quiet moments of the session, add connection between parents and children with small hand actions. Have the child sit on a parent’s lap, or snuggled next to them for a bigger child. Faces and bodies should be angled toward each other, without being directly face-to-face. Have them imagine they are stage actors with the camera acting as the audience – the audience should be able to see their faces even when they are interacting one-on-one with each other (see Play to the Audience).
Get up close, prompt with suggestions below, then shoot tight to capture the moment and the emotion. Play with selective focus with a wide aperture to highlight the connection (e.g. focus on hands, fingers, blurring faces behind, etc). This is a great prompt for breastfeeding toddlers: shoot tight on little fingers playing with mom’s shirt or jewelry.
For larger groups, such as both parents with a child, or older children, link people together with hands and then shoot the whole group.
For more ideas on how to pose hands and show connection, see Use Hands, Family Trees, Two Rules Together and Lead Me.
Idea 1: Tight photos of hands touching
- Child sitting cuddled on lap or beside parent.
- Bodies angled in, but not face-to-face (see Play to the Audience).
- Give them the below prompts and shoot tight.
- Gently touch your child’s face.
- Brush your child’s hair aside.
- Rub your child’s fingers in your hand.
- Give your child a gentle tickle.
- Have them hold something together and examine it closely.
Idea 2: Link people with hands
- Set up a paper doll chain of people and shoot symmetrically, front-on. Then have them walk towards the camera, or away from the camera, still holding hands. Have parents swing small children into the air.
- Have everyone do a “hands in” where all members hold hands or make a stack of their hands (you could get on the ground underneath the hand stack and shoot up, to capture faces in the background).
- For a group of older children and adults, have everyone bunch up for a group photo, then give the instruction: Everyone find someone to hold onto! Put an arm around waists, shoulders, link arms, hold hands, put a hand on a shoulder. Everyone has to be connected to someone else!
Creative extension
- Pop your macro lens on your camera, and get creative with close ups of fingerprints, wrinkles, family characteristics.
Tag @promptographerguide and use the hashtag #promptographerguide to share your favorite photos captured with this prompt.
Want this prompt in your Field Cards set?
All the info in this prompt post is summarized onto a single card in the Promptographer Guide Field Cards, with the details given in the accompanying Guidebook. All the ideas are given on the one card so you have a rich, comprehensive tool for sparking ideas. I’ve designed it this way so you only need five to ten cards to build a whole photoshoot.
If you want this prompt in your set, make sure you include Set 8: Childhood Moments in your Field Cards.
