Here are some tips for photographing children who are too busy to sit still or who hate having their photo taken! If you are lucky enough to start your photography journey photographing a baby,you get to ease into learning how to photograph a moving subject. If you start learning with a toddler, it can be so frustrating! This is the biggest pain-point experienced by my mothers learning to photograph. Read my best tips for photographing children below!
Let go of the sit-still-and-smile expectation
Do you like standing still doing nothing but smiling at a camera? Me either! Asking children to sit still and smile for a photo really isn’t fair. Do they know how to smile? Yeah, sure. But are they used to doing it on command. You CAN get great candid photos of your child that you will cherish just as much as (and probably more than), a “smiiiiiile.” Get down to their eye level and be willing to follow their move.
Have them interact with something/someone
Have your child(ren) interact with something or someone instead. Letting your child play with something or interact with someone is often your best best to getting them to sit ‘still’ for a photo. Then you can engage and play with them to help bring out those smiles naturally. Consider playing a game or prompting them to look at certain things (blog post with my favorite specific prompts coming this Thursday).
Expose them to the camera often
I’m not suggesting you need to use it all the time. But, the more your children see you casually working with your camera, the less of a big deal it will be. They may be very distracted by it at first, and even want to mess with it. You decide what your boundaries are, but for my child it worked to let her sit in my lap and explore it a few times, and then she decided she had better things to do (she was about 10mo at the time). She doesn’t mind when I have the camera out now, she carries on or engages in playing with me.
Be honest
I recommend being really honest ahead of time with older children. Tell them how important it is that you have pictures of them and how grateful you are. Thank them when they do smile and show them the back of the camera. Show them the photos you have displayed around your home. Remind them when you took it, and how happy it made you. Tell them why photos are important to you. I can’t promise this will work for every kid but I bet it will work better than, “smile or I will take away xyz.”
What else?
For tips on preparing your children for a photoshoot, click here!