Family Portrait Lessons – Stop Acting Like A Parent for 90 Minutes

This is probably hard for many people to hear and it can be a sensitive conversation to have so many photographers will avoid it and try to work through these issues during a session, but we believe that it is best addressed up front, before a family or children’s portrait session.

We understand that we all want our little ones to be polite and behave as well as possible, but we also want to get the best possible family or children’s portraits. Contrary to what the majority of people think acting like a parent during the session is not the way to get those treasured portraits you’re after.

Here is the fact…the vast majority of kids under the age of about 6 or 7 will not sit still for long and do not react well to being posed. They get bored quickly and the session stops being fun. To make matters worse, a parent continually telling them “sit still” – “put your hands down” – “look at the camera” – and my all-time favorite “say cheese” – very often makes matters worse. Little ones tend to get sullen and refuse to smile when they think they are in trouble or being repeatedly corrected.

Our advice – let kids be kids and let the photographer (us) direct the session. Just relax and enjoy the time and experience of making and preserving these special memories together.

We do the majority of our sessions on-location, so we like to let the kids run around and play…we let them be kids. That’s why we schedule 90 minutes. We may only need 20 – 30 minutes of actual shooting time, but the rest is allowing the kids to burn off some energy, enjoy themselves and get comfortable with us and our equipment. That is the benefit of experience and why you hire a professional.

The key for Mom & Dad, relax and let them be kids…maybe try being a kid yourself. 10 or 15 years from now when they are teenagers and developing lives of their own wouldn’t you rather look at portraits of your family filled with love, laughter and genuine closeness rather than a static, boring shot of all of you looking at the camera with posed smiles or worse…no smiles at all?

Here is how we make that happen.

First, a pre-session consultation is essential. It allows us to learn as much as possible about your family and what they like and what makes them happy, so we can do our best to bring those elements into your session and get you the best possible portraits. Does your little girl love Dora? Then we will make sure we have the Dora theme song on our iPhone to play during the session to get her reaction. Does your little boy have a favorite toy? Bring it with you even if you don’t want it in the pictures for some reason. We might be able to use it to get his attention or to make him smile. Trust us to find out what we need to know and to use that information to maximum effect.

During this consultation we will also go over studio information, policies and our thoughts on issues such as this one so we are all on the same page and there are no surprises during the session.

Many clients, and sadly some photographers, think that a pre-session consultation is unnecessary and a waste of time, but we believe it to be an invaluable tool in preparing to capture the best possible images for your family…memories that you will treasure for a lifetime, not just snapshots that will end up in a drawer next week. Trust us to make that happen.

Second, scheduling the session is another major piece of the puzzle. Most children under the age of about 8 will do better with an early morning session, before their day gets busy, hectic and before they get tired, hungry for lunch or near time for a nap. They are energetic in the morning, but they are also happy and less likely to get grumpy. Those are all the things we want.

Third, and this one is much harder for some people, relinquish control. Monitor your kids to make sure they are safe and don’t wander off, but please don’t be a parent. Let them enjoy themselves and let us gently direct them where we want them to go. Allow us to pose you and then insert the children; hopefully you are able to sit still just a bit longer than they can.

Allow us to “build” the portrait piece-by-piece through posing you and then inserting the kids quickly so that we can get off a few shots before they get fidgety and want to move again.

Also, and I can’t stress this enough, please do not encourage your children to “say cheese” unless you want that silly smile they get when doing that. We have numerous tricks we can use to get more relaxed, natural smiles on the little ones and also maybe make them laugh to get multiple images of how your kids look when they are really happy and having fun.

It is very hard, virtually impossible really; to get quality portraits for your family if you have your head turned toward your child the majority of the session telling them what to do, which quite often is not what we want them to do, or if you continually look frustrated or angry. If you relax, look at us and smile we can direct the kids and get them to look at us at the same time.

Relinquishing control is also very important even if you are not in the photo. We don’t want your little ones looking at you throughout the session rather than at the camera or where we are trying to direct them. This is the same reason why we have a studio policy against personal cameras or camera phones during a session…the kids, and sometimes the adults don’t know where to look and it gets distracting for everyone.

Why should you do all these things and let us take control? Simple…you are paying us for our expertise, experience and skill; let us use those things.

Weddings Part III: Looking Your Best in Wedding Photos

Welcome to the third part in our series on photography and your wedding. In Part I we explored posing mistakes and in Part II we discussed how to choose your wedding photographer. Today we will explore some things you can do to help everyone look their best in your wedding photos.

Very few people truly enjoy having their picture taken and even fewer enjoy the amount of picture-taking that happens at a wedding, especially if you’re the bride, the groom or a member of the wedding party.

Since you have no choice, you might as well look your best, right? Here are some easy things you and your wedding party can do to make sure that happens. Let’s start at the base with some physical things you can do and work our way up.

1. Wear comfortable shoes, or at least as comfortable as possible. You may be on your feet for most of your wedding day, so don’t make yourself any more uncomfortable than necessary. Also, try to remember when posing for photos to keep your weight on your back foot and your front foot pointing towards the camera.
2. Turn your hips at a 45 degree angle to the camera and away from the light source if possible.
3. Keep your bouquet down at waist level and facing outward and slightly up. This will show off more of the gown or the dresses that you have put so much thought and money into.
4. Remember that keeping your arms in tight at your sides or behind your back will accentuate any upper arm heaviness and make your shoulders look more broad. Hold your arms just slightly away from your body, just enough to give your biceps / triceps some breathing room, and your arms will appear thinner.
5. Try to elongate your neck slightly and raise your chin slightly to avoid double chin and creasing in your neck. It also helps if you press your tongue against the roof of your mouth just behind your front teeth.
6. Close your eyes, relax your face and count to three if you feel like you just can’t smile for another second. Ask the photographer to count down to snapping the photo and at the last moment, open your eyes and light up that winning smile.

Now, let’s look at some things you can do in preparing for the wedding day that will help in looking your best:

1. Try to get plenty of sleep and drink plenty of water in the week before the wedding. This will go a very long way towards making your eyes much clearer and brighter and also is very helpful to your skin tone. Let’s face it, tired dehydrated people rarely look appealing.
2. Go easy on lotions and skin creams the day before and the day of your wedding. You don’t want your face to look oily or sweaty in your photos.
3. Also, go easy on toning make-up. It may give you that bronzed appearance, but often that will confuse camera settings and you end up looking orange in your photos. Consider hiring a professional make-up artist for your wedding day.
4. Make sure you have any facial treatments, waxing or hair coloring done at least a week before the wedding to avoid any red patches of skin or any reactions to the hair dye.
5. Make sure that anyone who will have any need to adjust or move your gown gets a manicure before the wedding. This means your Maid of Honor, your Mother, maybe the bridesmaids and, yes despite all the protests…the groom. At our studio, we always get a manicure before working a wedding because we will often need to adjust the wedding gown and any ragged edge on a fingernail is very easily caught on most wedding dresses. Also, consider how much better those wedding ring close-ups will look if both you and the groom have a fresh manicure.
6. Relax and be yourself. If you are stressed it will show and your photos will capture it. Don’t worry about why the cake table is where the gift table was supposed to be. Enjoy your day and focus on having fun and relax.

There you have it. Wedding photos made easy and beautiful…well at least you have some of the needed information now. Let us know what you think about this article or if you have any other tips we may have missed and watch for Part IV coming up soon.

Weddings Part II: Choosing Your Photographer

Welcome to the second part in our series on photography and your wedding. Today we will explore some suggested criteria you can use to choose your wedding photographer.

Let’s begin by agreeing on one simple truth; for most couples, after the wedding is over, you will only have 4 things left to take with you from your big day. Your wedding gown, your wedding rings, your wedding photographs and your credit card bills. You had better make sure that you like the first three and that you put an appropriate amount of thought into choosing all three.

Many people get so caught up in the fun of selecting the wedding items that their family and guests will see, the cake, the gown, the decorations, that they almost choose a photographer as an after thought.

Why is choosing your wedding photographer so important? That person, or team, will potentially have the greatest impact on how you remember the most important day of your life. Consider that once the cake has been eaten, the DJ has packed up and the flowers are gone all you will have left are your memories, which may very well be just a blur of moving from table to table, and your photographs. After your spouse, this may be the most important person you choose to make a part of your wedding day.

Style & Quality

The first thing that you want to consider is the style and quality of the photographer’s work. Be sure to look carefully at all the images displayed on the photographers website or blog. Are you looking for someone who does more traditional posed wedding photography, someone who uses more of a photo-journalistic style or a combination of the two? Make sure their shooting style matches with what you envision your photographs will look like. Also look closely at their work with an eye toward these three questions:

1. Is it well lit?
2. Is it in focus or focused on an appropriate element within the photo?
3. Is the subject well framed within the photo?

Price

This is the point where you want to look at price and which of the photographers you have on your short list fit into your budget. I recommend looking at quality and style first because if you truly want beautiful wedding photos that should be your primary consideration. When evaluating price, find out everything you get for the price points each photographer uses. Be sure to ask the following questions at a minimum:

• Are you limited in the number of hours?
• If so, what is the cost for additional time?
• Are you limited in the number of locations the photographer will go to on your wedding day?
• Does the photographer use an assistant or a 2nd shooter?
• What is the additional charge for these folks?
• Does the package price get you any type of credit towards your wedding album or other products / prints?
• Is online proofing available?
• If not, how will out of town family and guests see the photos?

Experience

Now its time to look at the photographer’s experience. Keep in mind, like any other occupation or career, there are people with a vast amount of experience that you will not like as much as someone with much less experience, so use this as one check point on your list. Talent doesn’t necessarily come with experience, but what does is the ability to know how to shoot a wedding; where to be at the right time; how to get into position for the shot without being a nuisance to your guests; maintaining a professional demeanor on what can be a very stressful day; the ability to keep you and the wedding party smiling when you feel like your cheeks will crack and fall off. All of this comes from two things – the photographer’s experience and personality.

This isn’t to say that you should never consider or contract a less experienced photographer. After all, there wouldn’t be experienced photographers if no one gave them a chance when they were new. Again, use experience as one of your check points and weigh it with all the other criteria to make your choice.

Interview

Next you will need to interview your prospective photographers either on the phone or in person; I prefer to meet in person. This is your opportunity to get to know the photographer, after all, this person and their team will be spending several hours with you on the most important day of your life. Your photographer is one of the most important and conflicted choices you will make. The person you choose must be someone you feel a connection with and who you feel listens to what you want and also understands you, but who can also be unobtrusive and seem to almost not be there. Get to know and LOVE your photographer…whoever you choose. I would NEVER contract a wedding photographer without speaking with them more than once and getting a feel for the person and how they interact with people.

Here are some sample questions you should ask, at a minimum, during your interview:

• Will they be your photographer on the wedding day?
• What is their back-up plan in case or illness or an emergency?
• How many photographs do they estimate they will take?
• Can you put together a list of “Must Have” photos?
• What are their policies on the deposit, paying the balance and refunds?
• How long after the wedding will you receive proofs or your online gallery?
• How long after choosing your images will you will receive your wedding album?
• Do they charge extra for touch-ups / editing and how much?
• What format do they shoot the images in? If it’s digital, make sure they are shooting in RAW format.
• What lighting situations are they familiar with?
• How intrusive will their equipment be?
• How many weddings do they shoot on one weekend?
• Can you buy the negatives or a high resolution CD/DVD of your wedding photos? What is the cost?
• Will they make site visits to the ceremony & reception location before the wedding date? Is that included in your price?

A word about site visits because this is a pet peeve of mine. In my opinion, your photographer MUST do at least one site visit to each location before the wedding day, preferably with you. This is an invaluable tool for both of you. If your ceremony or reception will be outdoors, they should also do the site visit at the same time of day as the wedding and not 6 months in advance. This is to see the lighting they will be working with outdoors and how the buildings, trees, etc impact that lighting. The lighting at your ceremony site in December will look much different on your wedding day in May. The photographer also needs to meet the people running each location to be sure of their policies and restrictions. This is especially important if your ceremony is in a church. Many churches do not allow flash photography during the ceremony and restrict where the photographer can go within the building. They need to know these things ahead of time. It also helps ease the mind of the person performing the ceremony if you assure them you will respect their restrictions and their church. The last thing about site visits is that it gives the photographer the opportunity to scout locations at the site for photos either before the wedding, after the ceremony or during the reception. In my opinion site visits are imperative and should always be done at least once. I don’t mind flying by the seat of my pants when the situation calls for it, but why do it if I don’t have to?

Make Your Choice and Get It In Writing

It’s time to evaluate all the information you have accumulated and make your choice. Once you choose…sleep on it for the night and then call and ask the photographer to pencil you in their calendar until you can meet again to complete the contract and pay your deposit. Make sure you get all the details in writing; dates, times, locations, phone numbers, a description of what the photographer is doing for the fee you are paying, how many hours, all of it. The contract should be as detailed as you can make it so there are no misunderstandings.

Now it’s time to relax, finish your wedding planning and get ready to read Part III of our series with tips on how you and your wedding party can look your very best for your photos.

Please feel free to leave any comments you might have.

Weddings: Part I – Posing Problems

This is the first in a multi-part series of Blog posts that will cover a wide range of wedding related topics beginning here with posing for your photographs and including other subjects such as information on how to prepare to look your best for your wedding photos, a guide to the important factors in choosing a wedding photographer, memorable and unique ways to use photography in relation to your wedding and many other topics. We hope you find these posts informative and entertaining.

Now, on to the subject of posing.

Many photographers will ask the bride and groom for input on their wedding photos and any specific requests they may have. We actually provide all of our wedding clients with a sample list of “Must Have” wedding photos. We believe strongly in giving our clients what they want, but we also believe that many clients either do not know what they want or are not fully aware of how that image they “really want” will look. To alleviate the stress and to ensure everyone is happy, we very often will take the image the way the client has envisioned it and then we will take a similar image in a more technically correct way and let the client choose the one they prefer when we review the finished images.

We would prefer to have clients choose us for our vision, skill and artistry rather than because we simply do everything they ask for.

Here are some examples of common posing problems:

1. Straight arms and legs – if the body part bends, bend it. It will make you look far less stiff and less “posed”

2. The wrong expression for the selected pose. If you are looking off camera, generally this pose lends itself to a dreamy or thoughtful expression, so a large smile or laughing may make this image look off

3. The subject’s hands are completely in the pants pockets – keep the thumb outside the pocket and relax the arms for a more natural looking pose

4. The subject’s heads are all straight – this looks extremely posed and artificial – a slight tilt to one side is much better for a more natural looking image

5. The bride is seated causing her bustier or corset to give her bust line and unflattering or unnatural appearance

6. The subject has an arm dangling that could be placed around the bride’s waist

7. The subject faces directly into the camera with all their body weight on their rear leg – Always try to turn at a 45 degree angle to the camera, with your hips angled away from the light source and keep your weight on your front leg – this will give a more slimming effect

8. The wrong pose for the subject’s body type or individual body characteristics – never photograph a larger or heavyset person from a low angle – do not photograph a person with prominent ears directly from the front – we must continually evaluate each subject’s body and characteristics to get the best shot possible

The goal is always to create poses that don’t look posed and give our subjects the most flattering look possible. A trick we use with children to get more natural smiles is asking them to say “yes”. That word will produce a soft smile that does not look forced. With adults, we ask them to sing the letter G. Very often when this is done together it causes at least mild laughter which will give us a good range of images in the one pose, from smiling to laughing, and they all look natural and unposed.

Please watch for the second part of this series where we will explore the important factors in choosing your wedding photographer.