5 Essential Parent Preparation Tips for Family Photos

Children. They seem to grow up so fast. One day, you’re bringing them home from the hospital and before you know it, they are heading off to their first day of school. And being that time seems to fly, it’s a good thing that you can document your children’s special moments by taking some professional family photos. If you’ve scheduled a photo shoot for you and your kids and you’d like a few tips on things that you can do to prepare for it, we’ve got five that will be sure to make the experience easy and the results fantastic below:

Make sure everyone has a good night’s rest the night before. No one feels much like smiling when they are tired. And when kids haven’t had a good night’s rest, their fatigue can manifest in all sorts of ways from hyperactivity to whining to having a short attention span. That’s why, on the night before a family photo shoot, it’s important that everyone gets plenty of sleep (six hours, at least).

Don’t schedule shoots before eating or nap time. If you have young children, there’s a pretty good chance that you’ve put them on a schedule when it comes to eating and napping. Therefore, it’s pretty normal that your kids will get a bit restless or cranky about an hour before it’s time to have a meal or before they need a bit of shut eye. For this reason, do your best not to schedule your photo shoot around their eating or nap time.

Have your kids meet your photographer before the shoot. It’s kind of odd to expect a child to do a lot of smiling or laughing when they’re posing for someone who is basically a stranger to them. That said, one of the best ways to insure that they won’t have facial expressions that will display awkwardness is by actually having your kids meeting with your photographer before the photo shoot. They can come to your house, but it’s even better if you take your children to the location where the shoot will be. That will help them to get more relaxed in that space before it’s time to take pictures.

Bring some props to the shoot. If you were to ask a photographer who works at a place like Diego Molina Photography for some tips on family portrait preparation for you and your family, something that they would probably tell you is that you should bring some props to the shoot. Not only will it help the pictures to have more of a personal touch, but if you have small children, it will also help to keep them occupied in the pictures and also in between shots.

Offer a reward for good behavior. After the first five or six pictures, your kids are probably going to feel like they’ve been there forever. Something that you can do that will help to keep their excitement level up is to offer some kind of reward for good behavior. It can be as simple as saying “When we finish, we can go to get some pizza or some ice cream.” That should be enough to keep a smile on their face until your family photo shoot comes to an end!