A child’s first portrait sitting is an opportunity to establish a parent’s expectation for future sittings.
If you have watched me work with children or have even followed my blog for a while, you may have learned that I would rather the parents not help with posing or getting expressions. I do my best work when a parent understands and accepts this or in preschools and child care centers where the staff trust that in this situation, I can work with the children better than they can.
Children usually come accompanied with an adult, adults who have a relationship with the child. If that adult insists on controlling or even influencing your interaction with the child, your ability to do what you would otherwise be capable of doing is limited.
If the adult is familiar enough with my work or that of a similarly skilled photographer they will realize that if there is anything that they can do that will be helpful, I will tell them. They assume and respect my competence just as they would any other skilled person, such as an auto mechanic, plumber, electrician, doctor or dentist.
Unfortunately, some parents (and child care providers or preschool teachers) do not expect this kind of competence. They expect a photographer to have a nice camera and a computer and the skills to operate these. They do not expect a children’s photographer to be able to work with children, to pose them and get expressions better than they can.
Usually these parents (or child care providers) quickly see what I am doing and stay out of the way, but not always. These are the times when I spend more time than necessary taking pictures that are not consistent with my usual work. I can’t overcome their preconceptions, their past experience. Believing is seeing. They see what they expect to see.
It all starts with their first experience with a photographer, their first baby.
When you are the first children’s photographer the parent meets, this is an opportunity to shape that parent’s expectations. How you interact with the parent and child will influence their future expectations.
I prefer to interact directly with the children. If I try to interact with a subject through a third party, it is awkward and slow. It is much more difficult to get the subject to relax.
If you are uncomfortable handling and talking to a baby, practice will help. Practice preceded by observing, instruction and coaching will help even more. In the end it is only by doing something many times that we become comfortable.
The alternative is to interact with the child through the parent. This will set a precedent for that parent. Whether or not that is good for you depends upon whether or not you ever want to work directly with that child.
The pictures accompanying this article are all of infants less than a month old. Two of the three images are children of parents that trusted me and let me do what I wanted (and they wanted) with their children. The third image was taken with the assistance of a large extended and excitable family. It took a while. Fortunately, the children slept through much of it.