Toddler Photo Shoots – Keeping it Relaxed

Look, I’m not going to lie and say that two year olds are the easiest age of child to photograph. If you’ve met one, you’ll know that this isn’t going to be the case.

In the case of this lovely family, they’d been visiting all through their daughter’s first year with the newborn and Baby Photography Club photo shoots and they decided to come back to celebrate her second birthday.

I always say at the start of a session with this age group that time is not our friend.  Two year old’s don’t get more cooperative the longer that they stay in the studio. Even if they’re happy to be photographed, experience has taught me that taking an overly long time just results in either grumpiness or chaos so sessions with this age group will always involve use working as fast as possible to keep them engaged and having fun to capture them at their best.

The other thing that I learned early on, is that there isn’t a lot of point trying to over-pose them and create the ‘perfect’ portrait image. They don’t know what we’re trying to achieve and frankly, couldn’t care less about it so I have developed a go with the flow approach that seems to work best.

In the case of this session, the little lady in question was initially a bit unsure of the studio environment but once she warmed up to it, she was certainly quick on her feet.  So we kept changing chairs for her to sit on and distraction tactics to keep her engaged and involved in the photos.  We discovered about half way through that she really loved my bubble machine so we just left it running and allowed her to play in the bubble stream. She was having such a good time that her parents wanted to join in and this image is the result of that.  Keeping it relaxed and capturing a family all having fun together!