That’s quite a common thing that I hear at the studio and I guess it stems from a fear of those old fashioned portraits where everyone looks very stiff and formal.  There’s always going to be an element of posing in the studio as I’m there to make you into great shapes and I also need to light you but that doesn’t mean that the resulting images need to look unnatural.  In fact, I quite often set you up as a group and then we just let the action unfold and capture it as it goes.  When it comes to kids, because of the requirements for good lighting (after all you’ve come to me for professional images), it means they can’t just run around and play with each other. Quite often this will result in lots of photos of the tops of their heads anyway so we take the same approach.  We set them up with a location and then give them an activity and encourage them to interact.  Don’t be shy in the studio – we will sing, dance, shout ‘poo’ and do anything it takes to get the fun going!