The Top 5 ways you may be Sabotaging your Family Portraits - part 1 | Lehigh Valley Family Photographer | Allentown Family Photographer
Hey Mama!
So I get it; I understand how important it is to you to have a perfect family portrait session. You dream of a session where the kids are genuinely smiling, where your partner is having a great time, and you look and feel amazing. When I have my own portraits done I want the same exact things! As a Lehigh Valley Family Photographer capturing hundreds of families over the past 6 years, I’ve seen it all - and I’ve come to learn many trends I see that Mamas think are helping their session. But in fact, the complete opposite is true - they’re having a negative result. From fake smiles to complete meltdowns, there are so many ways that you can help your session go more seamlessly. This week we’ll start with my #1 & #2 top Sabotages!
Sabotage 1: Coaching your kids to CHEESE
One of the first and most consistent things I notice that happen when a parent coaches a child to cheese, is that we get fake, painful looking smiles. Like, seriously painful! I almost always remove them from the final gallery (unless there are absolutely no genuine smiles at all) because there is NO WAY any parent will be putting them up on the wall.
I understand that the thing a parent wants most out of their session, above anything else, is their child’s beautiful, radiant, natural looking smile. Coaching your child to “cheese” not only creates unnatural & sometimes absolutely terrifying smiles, it creates stress in your child. They want to make their parents happy - and when their parent is telling them their smile isn’t good enough or looks fake (well, it is!) they become really disheartened.
So, how do we get those amazing authentic smiles you dream of? First and foremost, by leaving the cheese for the mice. Secondly, by simple telling your children we’re gonna go have fun at the park, or with Miss Kristin (or insert other photographer here, but seriously you should book a session with Miss Kristin!) Then, show up to the session and let your photographer take care of the rest! It’s a photographer’s job to engage with your child and invoke authentic emotion. How do I do this? By engaging naturally with your child! I smile, compliment, ask questions, sing to, dance for, and be totally silly and wild to get those natural, real smiles we really want. Are some children more resistant than others? HECK YES. There are some kids who have stone cold hearts in how they feel about Miss Kristin - and that’s when I call parents in to help.
All of these examples shown are their coached cheese smile on the left, and on the right, their natural response to Miss Kristin being silly.
How can you help? Instead of standing off to the side and yelling “CHEESE” you can:
dance
make silly faces
make fart noises (this is especially popular with the boys)
tell them you love them
tell them how proud you are of them or something you really like about them
All of these things (and more) I can promise you, have a greater chance of evoking that smile you can’t live without, than any type of provolone or muenster you can request of them.
Promise.
Sabotage #2: Disciplining your Children during the session
Some of you may be saying “say what???” Let’s make this clear: when your child is in a dangerous situation or hurting themselves or someone else, discipline is always important. I’m talking about discipline that I find totally unnecessary during a photo session - both in the opinion as a photographer and in the opinion as a parent. Over the years I’ve witnessed children be disciplined during a session and their spirit totally shut down as a result.
Examples of things that can shut children down include, but aren’t limited to:
“If you don’t smile you don’t get that toy later”
“Sit down or we aren’t going to the zoo”
“You’re ruining this for mom”
“I’m very unhappy with you right now”
Physical Discipline of any kind
Words are very powerful and words from our parents are certainly no exception. Negative reinforcement doesn’t help create the portrait session any of us want. They know they let you down and it goes into a downward spiral from there. Other things that are harmful to children during their session is being over critical about them - and honestly makes me feel very uncomfortable!
So what then is an appropriate behavior to model during our session? Positive reinforcement!
This can look like:
“It makes Mommy so happy when you show your beautiful smile”
“I’m so excited you’re going to get gummy bears for sitting so well”
“It’s ok if you need a break/are nervous/are scared!”
“Wow, what a wonderful job you are doing! Can you also do this?”
It’s also important to note that sitting still and smiling isn’t the crux of a perfect family session - it can be playing with your family, snuggling, walking hand in hand. Please don’t stress and resort to negative behaviors if your child isn’t sitting or smiling the way you want them to - especially the little ones. They’re supposed to be really wiggly when they’re young. Instead, think about ways you can positively motivate them to participate - and if all else fails, we’ll just try to have lots of fun!
Stay tuned next week for part 2!