Remember the $4 rocker portraits I made earlier this year? I’ve been itching to work on another portrait project with the kids. This time I took some headshots and put together a collage of expressions for each child…
Kid Portrait Collages
Similar to the kid rocker portraits, I pulled down the white backdrop (but you could totally use a white board or white wall as well) and each kid took a turn showing me their best expressions.
I asked them things like, “show me a scared face, a mean face, an excited face, a surprised face, etc”. For Henry and Edie I could get pretty specific, but for Dot I had to be pretty general like ‘happy, sad, angry, etc”. She was trickier to get a wide range of expressions but I still love how they all turned out. In general, the wider the variety the better. Being a naturally emotional 4 yr old, I think Edie was the best at giving me a wide range of expressions.
Then, in photoshop (or whatever program you use to edit your images), I selected a few favorites and pieced them together in a collage. The big thing is to think about framing before you put together the collage. Framing can be super expensive so anytime I print anything I try to make sure it’s going to fit a standard IKEA size. This size was 16 x 20 which is a popular poster size.
For printing, honestly I don’t have a go-to yet. For the rocker portraits, I made engineering prints since I liked the look of them a little more grainy and blown out. I had those printed at my local Staples but was frustrated with their process. But for these portraits, I wanted them to be more photo quality. I ended up printing them with Collage.com and was pretty happy with how they turned out. They each cost about $13 to print which isn’t bad. The frames were each $10. So total, each one was $23.
I really like how they turned out and the range of personality they each show. Man, I love these kids so much.