How to get children to smile or not
Here is a challenge: How to get children to smile. There are tricks to this and here are some ideas.
Everyone has been taught from birth how to get a kid to smile. You just tell them to say “cheese” and they respond with a nice big natural smile, right? Well, anyone that’s actually tried this can testify to how well it works (if you didn’t catch my sarcasm… it doesn’t). You end up with a photo of a kid with clenched teeth, a scrunched nose, and raised eyebrows.
In this article, I’m going to give away all of my secrets that I’ve picked up as a professional children’s photographer for getting nice, natural smiles out of children.
- Tickle
Sometimes this one seems like cheating, but if the kid is ticklish, use it to your advantage. A light tickle will usually result in a perfect little smile. A full tickle-session will result in a rolling-on-the-ground laughing session. Both can work great. - Puppet
This is my favorite. It works every time. However you do need a helper. Get a couple of fun puppets, I name mine. Then have your assistant have that puppet jump on your head and also have a conversation with it. You don’t need to get complicated just play. Kids and adults love it. - Peek a boo
Great for little kids. Play peekaboo behind your camera. Make sure the camera is pre-focused and ready to capture the smile. This one works better with younger kids (up to about 2ish).
Another variant of this is to have someone hide behind the photographer, pop-out, hide again, pop-out… and you get the point. - Have Dad throw them around.
What kid doesn’t like to play rough and be tossed around? Have an adult in the photo with them. The adult can toss them in the air, lift them up and down, pretend to drop them, hold them upside down, etc… If you want to make sure the kid, and not the adult is the focus of the photo, then have the adult hold the child so that they are facing each other, and shoot over the shoulder of the adult. - Ge goofy
What kid doesn’t like to play rough and be tossed around? Have an adult in the photo with them. The adult can toss them in the air, lift them up and down, pretend to drop them, hold them upside down, etc… If you want to make sure the kid, and not the adult is the focus of the photo, then have the adult hold the child so that they are facing each other, and shoot over the shoulder of the adult. - Where to look? The two directions that I usually hear parents give are “say cheese” and “look at the camera”. We’ve already covered the “cheese” part, but I want to talk about the “looking at the camera” part. While head-on shots of kids looking at the camera are nice, that doesn’t always need to be the case. Kids can be camera shy, sometimes they just don’t have the attention span to stare into the camera, or perhaps they just aren’t good at looking directly into an inanimate object (the camera) and naturally smiling. Instead, try taking more candid style photos. Have them play with someone else, have someone tickle them, have them look somewhere else and laugh
- PS Not every photo needs a smile.
Candid photos can be such a nice moment of life frozen in time.
Take your time and have fun. Kids love fun and you’ll get great photos.
Here’s a link to my site on family photography. These make ME smile. https://charlottebell.com/family-photography/
