Diane Arbus

Arbus's photos of children closely reflect her projects of the extraordinary. Arbus is well known for photographing different, marginalised people. Her images of children therefore reflect this, as I believe they all contain some element of 'individualism', craziness, oddness, etc. 

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Cartier-Bresson's images are clearly snapshots of time - every photo is precious in its own way. Child innocence is explored through war and poverty, but hints at the joy children can find amongst anything. Like Lange, his photos are raw, blunt, stark. 

Dorothea Lange

Lange offers another different angle of the idea of child innocence. Her images are raw and simple. Where some images convey happiness and carelessness, others suggest loneliness and sadness, two things that aren't associated with child innocence. 

Julia Margaret Cameron

I've admired Cameron's work for a while now, I love her images experiment with focus, which many believe was down to her lack of photography skills. She was one of the inspirations of my last project, where I produced untraditional family portraits that weren't in focus where would usually be expected. 

Cameron's images of children show them in a very soft, innocent light, which is helped by the soft focus used in most photos. Cameron clearly understood that childhood was a precious time of life, which is expressed by her images.

Sally Mann

Sally Mann has been a reoccurring name when searching for child innocence photography. Although controversial, I think her photos are captivating, natural and bare. Her style of capturing her own children's lives and innocence is quite different to the ideas for my own project, but shows further understanding and insight into the idea of child innocence.

Favourite images from test shoot

The last image is my favourite. I love that he is looking up, the positioning and obviously how his fringe (although it doesn't look very 'jagged' in this photo) is the main event, along with his eyes. And his monobrow (which also relates to child innocence, because he didn't and doesn't care that I was taking a close-up photo of his monobrow, suggesting he has little sense of self consciousness). I think the photo gives enough, but not too much.

In terms of equipment, I am using a Canon 40D with a Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens. This particular lens enables me to get the close-up photos I want, whilst creating a good depth of field, so that I can adjust the focus. All photos are taken handheld, as I don't think a tripod would help in this case due to the motion of my subject, therefore I have to shoot in good light (which is all natural). I think artificial light would juxtapose the 'innocent' aspect to my project - innocence is related to pureness, natural, etc., so I believe using natural light feels 'right'.

Test shoot comments

I am already aware of the problems with shooting young children from my last project - they constantly move, don't want to stand still (and why would they want to?), making it tricky to get a decent photograph of them.

I tried the technique of getting my nephew to stand by a wall and count to twenty, attempting to turn me taking photos of him into a 'game', but apparently it wasn't very interesting as he moved away instantly. Therefore, much like my last project, my images will be ad-hoc in the sense that I will simply have to keep trying to take photos until I get the ones I want/like. You can't ask young children to sit on a chair and smile, or simply keep still, like an adult could. Ironically, the topic of my project disables me from capturing the images I want easily.