---

Click Here To See a Gallery of Ginny Felch's Images of Children

---

All images © Ginny Felch

Initially inspired to photograph her baby son, Virginia Felch has been a professional photographer for many years. She is a Master of Photography through Professional Photographers of America, a teacher, a longtime member of Photoworkshop.com, and can now add the achievement of author to her list of credits, as she’s written one of the series of Photo Workshop books by Wiley, Photographing Children. We chatted with her about the book, her upcoming projects, and about her photography in general.

At one time, Ginny Felch had a position with a large corporation. She began photographing her infant son while she was home on maternity leave, “and things just unfolded into photographing his friends and children at nursery school.” A woman hired Ginny and trained her to shoot weddings in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  “I thought it would be really cool to do that at the time,” she says. “If there was something that taught me to be a professional, it was that experience.”

Eventually Ginny began working for a neighbor who owned a portrait studio in Minneapolis. “He wanted me to do all the nuts and bolts; I worked in the darkroom, mostly,” she remembers. “He gave demonstrations on studio lighting techniques, and I found it exquisitely boring.” They attended a photography symposium in Duluth, where she met Sherman Hines, a photographer from Nova Scotia, who chastised the group on “hiding behind their cameras.” She says, “He wanted to teach us how to see the light. He took us out into the woods and asked us to set our cameras up as if they were on automatic, and told us to shoot from the heart.” This experience opened up a new world for her. “I immediately went home and asked friends if I could photograph  their children in this beautiful light.”

“I’ve learned all of my photography through my peers; through PPA and its local subsidiaries,” she comments, adding that she feels fortunate to have been able to study with photography icons Josef Karsh, Marie Cossindas, Joyce Tenneson, Sarah Moon, Morley Baer and Robert Sexton through Friends of Photography during the 1980s. One photographer she studied with at Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, California was Linda Lapp, who is now one of Ginny’s closest friends. “She was a divorced mother with four kids. She showed us what she did, and talked about marketing and business.” Ginny decided she too could become a pro. Before she knew it, she was divorced, but managed to work through this pain and became very successful with her home studio. “It was an amazing ride,” she says. “We were doing large wall portraits of beautiful children in beautiful clothes in wildflowers and other locations that looked very romantic.”

In 1998, Ginny’s son died tragically and she stopped working for a while. Her assistant went out on her own, but had attended one of Robert Farber’s workshops and told Ginny about Photoworkshop.com. “I knew who Robert was because I had some of his books,” she explains. “He was really a photographer who I admired very much.” She went to the site, signed up, and has been a member for the past 10 years. She won several photo contests on the website, and as one of the prizes, she was awarded the opportunity to by interviewed by Photography Insider magazine. “They published a three-page interview that included my photography,” she says. Ginny had also seen Judith Farber’s photographs of children and they began emailing one another. They had sort of a mutual admiration  and became good friends.

A couple of years ago, Robert approached Ginny about doing a book about children’s photography for the Photo Workshop series. “I said absolutely yes because I was thrilled about the concept of honing in on the creative part and inspiration,” she says. Wiley wanted to add more technical information, so Ginny enlisted Alison Tyler Jones, who has technical expertise and had marketed books as a scrapbooking expert. “I didn’t want the book to only be about me,” Ginny states, adding that she has a niche in children’s photography. This book includes images by a number of other photographers, including Tyler Jones. Photographing Children Photo Workshop was released on March 1, 2008.

As for upcoming projects, Marin County—where Ginny currently makes her home—will soon be hosting an artists’ open studio with a gallery and a beautiful catalogue. For this event, she’s showing a collection of gesture studies of people at the beach, which she’s printing on handmade papers. “I’m trying to keep an artful eye,” she says, “and staying in touch with what unfolds in my own vision.” One thing that people compliment her on, she says, is the natural look of her images. Ginny describes her style as “tender, whimsical; the style of pictorial photographers.” She uses Adobe Photoshop as more of a darkroom, describes herself as a “Photoshop addict,” and prints on art papers to express her vision. “The work of pictorial photographers had a look that was otherworldly.”

Ginny’s book is particularly amazing when you consider that she lost most of her negatives and photographs when her home burned down in the Oakland firestorm several years ago. This occurred in the midst of several other personal tragedies. “When I stood up again,” she points out, “the book was part of that healing process for me. I had lost my confidence, and it was like somebody thought that I’m still a viable photographer.” To gather images for the book, she went on a year-long search for her former clients, who were very happy to see her again. She has used a number of her old photographs as well as shooting pictures specifically for Photographing Children.

Ginny says her goal with this book is to get people excited about using their cameras on an automatic mode and looking for great light. “Just by starting to look for interesting compositions and by appreciating directional light, you can really improve your photographs. Some people have the vision, but can’t fathom the technical aspects,” she maintains. “I want this book to take away the intimidation.”

---

Ginny Felch’s Camera Gear
Canon EOS 5D with the following Canon EF lenses:
28-135mm
85mm 1:1.2
70-200mm 1:2.8


Five Tips for Creating More Beautiful Children’s Photos—From Snapshot to Fine Portraiture
1.  Relate to the child. Be authentic, not "phony."  Children pick that up in minutes.  Open up your heart and find your own child within.

2.  Learn to see light—find it. Your life and photography will be enhanced forever. Don't use flash!

3.  Watch out for background distractions, and be deliberate about it.  Don't count on post-production fixing.  As they say, GET IT ON THE NEGATIVE. (I'm dating myself here.)

4.  Don’t always center your subject.  Learn about other interesting and dynamic ways of placing the child in the image.  

5.  Avoid posy, “say cheese” portraits.  Learn to enjoy soft smiles, smiles in the eyes, gazes, and pondering, whimsical or amused expressions.

ADDITIONAL TIP:  In teaching photography, I find that most often beginner/amateur photographers make their prints too light.  You don't have to accept default settings on your camera, even the non-automatic ones.  Even if you don't think you need to, try darkening the whole exposure in Photoshop using curves or levels.  Do it on a layer so that you can “bring back” the face as needed.

See more of Ginny’s work at http://ginny-felch.photoworkshop.com
http://www.photographingchildren.com
http://www.silverliningimages.com

---

Click Here To See a Gallery of Ginny Felch's Images of Children

---

Let us know if you found this article useful, and tell us what kinds of articles you'd like to see in upcoming issues. Send your comments and ideas to Lynne Eodice.