I’ve lost count how many times I’ve worked with a client on getting something either one of us saw on Pinterest and wanted to recreate. That’s what it’s for, after all. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried those Cookie Monster cupcakes, or the French toast cooking in a crockpot all night, or whatever intriguing little hack that caught your eye, but it’s wildly and hilariously known that not all Pinterest ideas are a success. Google “pinterest fails” if you haven’t yet – you’ll die laughing.

I’m a “roll with the punches” kind of person when doing sessions with younger children. Half the time, kids are going to be kids, and mom gets secretly disappointed when junior only cooperates for the first ten minutes of the family session and we don’t make it down the mental checklist of super cool poses we had in mind. Usually I just roll with it because the next phase for a child is usually “meltdown” and that’s worse than them being uncooperative. This is when I reassure everyone that candids are also keepers, so let’s make this about capturing everyone together as if there were no camera and just let moments create themselves naturally.

Noah being oh-so perfectly Noah…

Some people might say that nothing beats a perfect family photo, but I might have to disagree. Is an overly-posed photo on some background with everyone wearing matching shirts most representative of your family, especially with children? Probably not. Is that a bad thing? NO! When I first started photography, it was during the big film-to-digital crossover. The film photography world was anti-wasteful, where EVERYTHING was thought out and planned, and forgive me, but also kind of trite and sterile. Nothing against film (I still shoot with it), but now that we’re in a digital age, it’s all about capturing the BEST moments possible. If you only got one shot out of 64 and it’s a money shot, then excellent! Some of the best shots of children I’ve captured were definitely not posed or planned.

Nemo, not interested in sitting still for his first-year photos, but totally killing it at candids!

If you’re doing a session with babies and small children, remember that they’re probably only going to give you limited time to get the “face the camera and smile” shots. You may even have to just give in and sit in the sand or the grass with them, at their level, so they feel more “involved” rather than instructed. If you walk away feeling like you didn’t quite get the shots you wanted, there’s a good chance there are some great candids in the batch. If you have a really good photographer, they probably got some!

At times, Pinterest-inspired images do happen successfully, and they are treasured just as much as the surprise candid captures where every client so far has said “I can’t believe you got this many! I thought we had nothing! There are so many good ones in here!”

Sleeping infants are just TOO easy!

Moral of this whole story is, don’t fret if you didn’t quite get the image you hoped for. At the end of the day, the best photos of your family will always be the ones where they were simply being themselves…in good lighting. 😉