The Pre-Session Warm Up!!

The Importance of Photographer-Child Interaction Time to Warm up Before the Session

I just wanted to take a minute to talk about the importance of the pre-session warm up. What is this, you might ask? This is the photographer-child interaction time that occurs before we begin the session. I always suggest that you show up a little bit early, maybe 15 minutes, to your session so we have this time to get to know each other. Especially with young children, it’s going to be a little bit scary interacting with someone they’ve never met before. We want to ensure we can really show off your child’s personality, so we want him or her to be comfortable. 
I will be using some of the GOR-GE-OUS images from Miss Adelina’s Milkbath session as examples for this! (Please feel free to share and comment below which is your favorite!)

If we were to just throw them into the middle of the session and there’s this stranger with a camera jumping around trying to get them to look and smile, your child is going to tense up and there may even be confusion. We really just want everything to run smoothly.

In the above photos, we took about 10 minutes of me just following her around with my camera! She quickly got accustomed to me being there and was the best little ham!

If you can arrive early, this will give me time to introduce myself to your child, and to try to get a vibe on how the session will go. Some children warm up right away, while others need the entire warm up time to start to feel comfortable and come out of their shells. And that’s OK as seen here! In the first photo, I believe this was one of the first 5 photos I took. She was not quite sure what to make of me just yet. But, as the other photos show, she quickly changed her mind! And the next one (LOL) she was she was trying to figure out what to make of this watery substance with flowers her Mom and I had stuck her into!

After I introduce myself, I will try to get to know your child. I’ll ask them questions about what they like, what they don’t like, sing songs, maybe play a game, etc. Just to break the ice a little, so by the time the session starts, your child is happy and more familiar with me. Making sure you’re there early enough to have this time is probably one of the most important tips I can give you for your child’s session.

Once we’ve done a session and your child realizes that I’m not scary and we have fun together, the next session shouldn’t need much warm up time at all, if any. But for the very first session together, it is a must.

I hope this was helpful and if you have any questions or would like more information for a session, please feel free to shoot me a message here and I will get back to you as soon as possible!