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 10 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 with us and with the environment.

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.

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.

After I introduce myself, I will try to get to know your child. I’ll ask 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.