Cooperation Tips

The point in family photos (or any photos for that matter) is to get photos to capture a moment in your life with everyone happy and smiling. But, if you've ever tried taking a photo of a cranky toddler who missed their nap time or a tween who would rather be any where else doing anything else, you know it's not as easy as yelling "smile!" and snapping the picture.

Some people think it takes some kind of special magic or just a whack of good luck to get even just one photo of a whole family with everyone looking at the camera and simply enjoying themselves (or at least appearing to).

So we're going to give you some tips and secrets to getting kids of all ages to cooperate for photos, both as the parent, but also how we get them to cooperate as well.

Just Make it Fun!

Kids just want to be seen, heard, validated and loved just like adults. No one wants to be bossed around or told to stand here or there, do this or that with our body and facial expressions without understanding the why behind it, especially kids. Treating them like valued human beings and listening to their concerns is essential to creating a strong, trusting relationship with them no matter the reasoning.

As the parent, when it comes to photos, be totally transparent with them. Get down to their level and speak to them face to face. Explain to them what's happening and why you're there. Make the idea of having photos taken fun for them!

As the photographers, we do what we can to make them fun as well! We say funny words, make funny faces and even let them make funny faces back, for example telling them "on the count of 3, I want you to yell smelly feet"! Doing things like this usually gets some cooperation in front of the camera.

With younger kids, being silly will go a long way. Making a fool of ourselves is a great (and fun) way to keep the kid’s attention on us when we need it! Sometimes we put our stuffed dog Spot on our wrist and let it dance around for the kids to see. Did you know we also have a dinosaur (or other similar animal) living in our camera lens that we need the kids to help us find?

Make it into a Game

Kids love games, and fortunately, pretty much anything can be turned into a game. Even family photoshoots. See who can make the silliest face, and soon they’ll be in stitches, laughing and playing together, creating the perfect happy scene for us to snap a photo of. We can ask who can skip the best, or who can hop the highest, and we’ll get some amazing action shots of the kids just having fun together. 

Playing peek-a-boo is a very simple trick works with pretty much any age! Toddlers absolutely love it, but even older kids won’t resist if you ask them to hide themselves behind a tree (or wall, door, etc.) and peek. We will never tire of the irresistible smiles that this activity brings!

Another simple but effective trick as photographers is challenging our subjects to a race. We have them run as fast as they can towards us. If we're the goal of their race, they will naturally keep their eyes on us while they run. This will allow us to capture fun images filled with movement, happiness and eye contact!

If we can make a game out of something, we'll try it. They’ll be way more likely to buy in because so much of motivating a child is just making something interesting and fun for them. Laughter, fun, joy, and, yep, a little friendly competition in a game, can transform a photo session with kiddos.

Let's Be Noisy!

When photographing babies, talking to them will usually work to get good eye contact. But when you make fun, unexpected noises you will hold their attention even more.

Some noises might make the baby look at us with a weird puzzled expression. Be sure to get creative and experiment with lots of noises to find the one that will make the baby smile! We also don’t hesitate to ask the baby’s parents for advice. You know which noises/songs make your baby happy!

With toddlers and older kids, changing our tone is a great trick to get their attention. Being super loud, or whispering as low as you can gets them to focus on us because the change of tone will surprise them enough to look at you and check out what’s going on!

Find Common Ground

Before we're even picking up our camera, we introduce ourselves to you and your kids. Once they know who we are, we try to find some sort of common ground with the child or children we’re photographing. We'll ask them what they love, what their favorite color is, their favorite music or storybook, then we'll see if we can incorporate that into the shoot.

Do they love Justin Bieber? We'll turn on Spotify and crank up “One Less Lonely Girl”! Are they obsessed with Frozen? We'll tell them how much Elsa would love their shoes! Connecting on some level, even in the smallest ways, is so special for little ones. They will get so excited that we share an interest in something they love, which will just boost their mood and willingness to work with us and listen!

Because a family session doesn’t last long, everything we can do to help us connect with your little ones as soon as we meet them will be priceless for the rest of the session. If the child feels that we genuinely want to be their friend, they're much more likely to interact with us and look at us during our time together.

Let us Direct the Session

If a child is being scolded by a parent in front of a stranger (us, the photographers), they will likely shut down and have a hard time being their fun and playful self. No one wants to be yelled at by someone… it’s embarrassing, no matter your age. And then to expect them to hug and laugh with that same person so they seem happy for a photo? Yeah. There’s just no way.

We will often encourage the parents to let us have a shot at correcting a kids behavior or finding a way to make them buy in to whatever it is that we are doing. Don’t underestimate taking a short break, changing the scenery, or stopping for a little water or a snack. Obviously, if safety is a concern or the behavior gets out of hand, we'll ask the parents to step in and we'll will step back. But we have never had that experience at any of our shoots.

Don't Use Bribes

We’ll say this now: Bribes during a session DO NOT work. Kids are too focused on instant gratification, especially if they are under 5 years old. They don’t understand that if they behave now, they can have a reward hours later.

If your child needs a few minutes to mellow out, whether by sitting on the ground or playing on your phone, we'll take those few minutes instead of bribing them. Bribing just doesn't work in the long run, so we don't encourage it all.

We encourage parents to NOT bring candy or other things to bribe them for the session because it will turn into a power struggle, make a mess on their pretty clothes, and disrupts the natural flow of our session. It’s way more worthwhile to explain to a child what’s happening, get them involved in the process, and making it fun! We'll show your kids the photos we've taken and even let them snap a picture or two if they want to try it out.

Nothing is Perfect

Basically what we're saying is, photographing kids can be challenging, but it can also be so rewarding! And even with all of the tips and tricks above, we're not always going to get everyone cooperating all at once, and that's okay too!

You know what your family is like. Your friends and family know what you guys are like too. You can try and try as hard as you want, but when kids (no matter the age) are involved, there's never going to be one perfect picture and that's expected.

We do everything in our power to give you that one Christmas-card worthy photo, but we aren't wizards. We can't make everything right. In the end, we send you the photos we love as your photographer for you to pick from. If we can fix little elements, we do.

But don't expect your kids to be perfect in every shot, because we don't expect it either. We're all human. And it's not always the kids that don't cooperate. We've seen plenty of adults not cooperate too!

With all of that being said, we have clients who come back to us year after year because their kids love us and connect with us. The images that were able to give them are better because we have a meaningful relationship with the kids, too.

They simply want us to capture their family memories for them because they can't do it all on their own.