In the leadup to this photo shoot, I got a question I get from so many parents of young children. I was told that the little lady was typically shy or grumpy around new people and could take quite some time to warm up. Would one hour be sufficient, I was asked. I answered the same way I always do, one hour is plenty! Typically, it only takes a couple of minutes to warm kids up as I always keep my sessions light-hearted and I’m just there to entertain and ensure they have fun. I’m always aiming for a mix of posed and candid family photos at every single session.
The proof is in the pudding, though, and it took us just a few minutes to bring out the smiles and then just a few more to break into conversation and become friends. The slight nervousness of our first photo was gone by the third frame and I knew it was time to ramp things up. We wouldn’t be able to hold this level of energy forever and things would likely get silly as the little one got tired, so I had a short window to make the biggest collection of images we could.
We kicked things into high gear and flip-flopped between my ideas and whatever the true master of the shoot decided was our next shot. We moved from a traditional portrait-style image to flipping upside down, and then dragging mum around the palace while chasing me. This wound us through the alleys of Changdeokgung and gradually filled my memory cards with frame after frame of laughter and smiles.
Oftentimes, allowing kids to feel that they’re in control of the session can give us the extra time we need to get a good variety of images from a family photo shoot. A great example of this would be this scene, where I had hoped to have the three family members sitting together playing for a portrait. Little Miss, however, had other ideas and really wanted a photo of herself sitting at her parents’ feet. Who am I to disagree? Allowing it led to the image I wanted anyway and allowed me to keep her on my side for the next little while.
It’s not often that we get to work in so many micro-locations with children so young, but if they’re enjoying the process, we can definitely bounce around as much as we like. In this session, we made our way to no less than eight micro-locations. Beautiful May light and a lack of tourism thanks to the last moments of a certain world-changing illness meant that we had nothing to contend with except for keeping a little person on board. That’s the easy part!
I hope you’ve enjoyed this session as much as I did photographing it. I can’t wait to work with this wonderful family again this autumn. But, in the meantime, if you’d like to have your own family photographed in Korea, please do reach out! Also, follow my Instagram for more!