This fall I completed several shoots for the company Laniel including shoots of their 8-12 collections. It is always a challenge making images that will appeal equally to an 8 year old, a 12 year old and their mothers. For this shoot we were going for a softer look emphasising friendship and a touch of innocent romance.



I am fortunate enough to be included in the Creative Review Photography Annual for the second year running.
I did a Q&A with the editor Patrick Burgoyne, you can see it here:
Anders Hald shoots children
The Q&A was also printed in the December 2009 issue of Creative Review

We recently completed SS10 for Petit by Sofie Schnoor, in a wonderful country house. Sofie is always pushing to develop and renew her visual expression which makes my job really interesting. There has always been a sense of romantic melancholy in Sofies images, but this year we wanted to expand the range of emotions, even allowing ourselves to go borderline kitch. I think the way to avoid melodrama becoming kitch is to believe in the shoot and take the emotions serious. The kids were great, very patient and blissfully unaware of the storyline we were making up around the images.
Directing kids is always interesting, most often you must NOT ask for what you want, but try to suggest it in a way that it feels spontaneous when it does happen.
The 8-12 year old group is notoriously hard to shoot right. The collections are always shot on models just slightly older than the target group and the danger is that it looks too ‘grown up’ for the (mothers of) the 8 year olds and too dull for the 12 year olds. The client asked me to shoot models in a white space, which is even more demanding on the models as they alone must ‘carry’ the shoot with their personality and energy. Fortunately I had great models from
http://www.1kid.dk/ and in order to set the mood for the day we did a full cast and crew dance warm up. I am sure the client as well as the models thought we were kidding when my assistant and I insisted they join in! It brougth a flush to the cheeks of all of us and got everybody laughing. Tensions were released and I am sure it helped the models to give the shoot all they had.
Not only did we have a lot of fun, we also ended up with a great set of images that were both energetic and harmless.

I just learned that I won another first place in a competition, this time the prestigious Prix De La Photographie. I won the fashion category with a children’s fashion image shot for Junior Magazine in the UK.

I also won a second place in the children’s portrait category and two honourable mentions.
From Prix De La Photographie Website: “In its very successful third year, Px3 received over six thousands entries. Entries were judged by category: Advertising, Photojournalism, Book, Fine Art, Nature, and Portraiture, all which contain various sub-categories. Each jury was asked to use these criteria when reviewing the photographs: originality, creativity, excellence of execution, and overall impact.”
To see the winners gallery visit http://www.px3.fr/

After spending much of the night pacing the floor with a slightly feverish 3 month old baby, I was pleased to learn this morning that I won an award in the Photography Masters Cup – The International Color Awards. I got First Place, Outstanding Achievement in the Fashion category.
It is an added pleasure that it is not a children’s fashion category, but the main fashion category.

http://www.thecolorawards.com/
I also managed three nominations in the Portrait category.