Photographing Kids: Getting a Reaction with Props

Video Transcript

"So again I am here with Ricky. My wonderful little model and we are going to talk about how to use props in order to get a reaction. Now, if I have time to be prepared for this I usually grab a little bag and I put some toys in it and I don't let the child see these toys prior to the shoot that way everything is kind of a surprise and I have lots of options, if something is not working, I can try something else. Something that I don't have in here that works really great too is bubbles. So just keep that in your back pocket. Okay, so I got Ricky here and again we have been doing this for a little bit so he is kind of bored with it but I have one of his very favorite toys in here. Who is this? Puppy. It's puppy, see how I am engaging him by asking some questions? This is puppy, do you love puppy? Yeah. Yah, do you want to touch puppy? But I may not give it to him right away and actually right after I kind of tease him with it a little bit, I might hold it up above my camera. Now he is watching and I got his eye line coming exactly into my camera and I got a great shot shot where he is making a lot of eye contact. But you can't keep it from him forever, so eventually you have to reward him with the toy or whatever and keep that in mind when you are selecting your props. Make sure to choose props that you are okay with them if they do end up in the picture. Sometimes once you give a child a prop, he doesn't want to release it, but I bet I can get Ricky to give up something else? Do you want to play with the guitar? Uh oh, not the guitar, how about the football? Okay Ricky, how about, who is this? Who is this? Tiger. It's a tiger. What does the tiger say? Raww. The tiger is going to come tickle you. Yeah, he is going to come tickle you. Here I trade you the tiger for the puppy? No. No, you don't want that? I want the puppy. You want the puppy? How about you clap your hands for the puppy? Yah, see, so I can kind of work with him and trade with him until you get a bunch of different reactions. You know Ricky is really a great model because he can do all kinds of things like; can you show me a surprise? Can you be surprised? Can you do mad? So you can kind of once you know the child you can work with them and play with them and get them to do all kinds of fun little things and even though he didn't want the guitar a few minutes ago, he is a great guitar player. Do you know how to do the ABC's? Remember when you did the ABC's? So I can get him kind of posing and doing all kinds of fun things with the props and use the props to tell a story."