Stop Posing. Start Playing. (Nobody Loves Their Yearbook Photo . Everyone Relives the Ones on the Fridge)
Most photographers will tell you exactly where to put your hands. I'd rather you forget I'm holding a camera at all.
That's not a style choice, it's a results thing. I shot a family a while back — a mom, a dad, and their four-year-old daughter — at a local park, close to golden hour. I didn't pose a single one of those photos. I gave them things to do instead: walk through the park together, dance for no reason, try to make each other laugh. Then I stood back and let it happen, more fly on the wall than director.
The best minute of that whole session: the mom sitting on the grass with her daughter in her lap, facing her. I told her to tickle her daughter. That's it — not "look natural," not "have fun," just tickle her. What I got back was a real belly laugh that softened into foreheads touching, both of them grinning at each other like nobody else was around. I didn't ask for that ending. I gave the opening and stayed out of the way.
Compare that to the instruction most family sessions actually get: "Okay, everyone look at the camera and smile on three." That's a pose. It produces a fine photo of four people standing in a row, technically smiling, looking at a lens instead of at each other. Nothing happened in that photo. It's the photographic version of picture day at school — hands folded, chin up, painted backdrop behind you — headed straight for a yearbook nobody reopens.
The tickle photo is the other kind. It's the blurry shot your mom took of you mid-laugh at the dinner table, the one that somehow outlasts every formal portrait you ever sat for. Nobody frames their yearbook photo. Everybody relives the one that's been stuck to the fridge for ten years.
My actual process is two steps. First, I tell people to forget I'm there — "pretend I'm not even here, just be with each other." That alone changes almost nothing; people don't know what to do with an instruction that open. So the second step is the specific one: tickle her. Walk that way. Try to make her laugh. A direction is small and concrete enough to act on, but it doesn't dictate the result — so whatever happens next is actually theirs, not mine.
If I'm honest, I think the fully staged, everyone-smile-on-three portrait is a bit of a missed opportunity. You got your whole family together, in good light, and asked for less than what was actually there. I'm not saying never do it — sometimes you need the version where everyone's looking at the camera. I'm saying it shouldn't be the only photo you walk away with.
When's the last time someone took a photo of your family actually laughing — not posing for a laugh? That's the version I actually shoot for. Message me if you want one.