The BeesKneesPhotos Blog

Introduction

There’s a saying that we all know very well… “never work with children or animals”. Well, we completely disagree – we love working with children (and animals). Yes of course they have their own mind and can be temperamental. And of course they just want to go off and do their own thing, which is often the opposite of what you want them to do. And yes they won’t ‘behave’. But that’s what we love about them. They have their own unique character and that’s what we strive to capture when we work with you. These are the memories you’ll cherish and want to remember forever.

There are a number of things we do to ensure you and your child, or children, have a great time, as well as making sure you have some fabulous wall art to display around your home:

Getting down to their level

In our experience the best thing we can do for a smooth family photoshoot is to get your children involved – so we do this by getting down to their level in two important ways:

• physically – with younger children we initially get right down to their level to talk to them, so that we’re not seen as ‘the big scary stranger’,
• emotionally – although children are ‘junior’ we don’t treat them that way – in our experience, the best thing we can do is to talk to them as though they’re at our level – we never want to ‘talk down’ to children, so we’d rather chat to them as though they’re adults. When we do this we find most will respond really well, as they rightly feel really valued and important.

We understand how the children are feeling

Depending on the age of the child(ren), and whether they’re tired or hungry, we find they usually go through the following phases during a photoshoot. Because we know this is their emotional journey it puts us in a good place to change what we do, depending on how everyone’s feeling at the time:

• distant – they’ll spend the first few minutes acting shy (if they’re young) or really ‘not at all fussed’ (if they’re teenagers),
• involved – after 5 minutes or so, their interest will have picked up, they’ll be less self conscious and they’ll be quite involved – at this stage everyone’s working well together and things are often going quite smoothly,
• bored – however, once their interest has peaked, they’ll start to get bored – with young children this can happen quickly, after just 5-10 minutes – this is the point where parents can begin to get frustrated that their children aren’t behaving as mum and dad would like,
• energise – this is the point where we and you need to be open to re-energising the children – more on this below,
• keen – now re-energised, this is where we find everyone is feeling confident and happy to be in front of the camera – at this stage we can be more adventurous without anyone feeling self-conscious.

So what do we do to re-energise you and your children?

It could be any or all of these, depending on what’s required:

• taking a complete break so that the children can run around,
• have young children help create poses for mum and dad to do together,
• getting the whole family to do some fun poses together – this works for all ages of children (yes, it even works for teenagers),
• giving the camera to a younger child (yes, sometimes we do) to take a few photos of others in the family – it makes them feel super special and often sparks their interest.

Their views are really important

We almost always find that children, no matter how young or old, will have an opinion on what they wish to do in front of a camera. We always find the best way to work with children is to ask them what they’d like to do then, at some stage during the photoshoot, we indulge them and let them do exactly that. In every case where we’ve done this, they’re over the moon that someone listened to them and that they were able to have their say.

But at the end of the day

If we can’t get your lovely Small Person(s) to look exactly how you’d like them to look in your photos, then together we’ll do the best we possibly can to make sure that we really capture that sparkle in their character that truly makes them who they are – and what you love dearly about them. So even if they’re not giving you the beautiful Mickey-Mouse-smile that you’d love them to share with us, then we’ll try hard to capture an adorable mischievous look, or a part-hidden shy face behind your trouser leg, or even a beautiful sad face – all of which can look adorably cute and will form part of your lovely memories of your wonderful family for years to come.

We aim to have fun

It sounds easy to say, but it’s difficult to do – yet it’s really important.

We don’t want you just to have a set of photos – we want you to have had a good time together too.

We’ve done this many times in the past – we feel we do this well, but don’t just take our word for it – have a look at What Parents Say About Our Family Photoshoots to see some of the actual quotes of our previous customers.

Why we do this

As a parent or grandparent you’ll know how quickly time flies when you have young children in your life. It’s these memories that we aim to capture, as these are the important memories that you’ll cherish for years and decades to come and hand down to your children to one day show their children.

More information

• How should I prepare my children for a photoshoot?
• What to wear for a family photoshoot?
• Choosing your colours for a family photoshoot
• Frequently-asked questions about family photoshoots
• otherwise you might find our galleries of photos of families, or photos of younger children, or photos of older children useful to see the types of photos we’ve created before.