[Mike McCarty]

Brenda,

My advice is to find that one place where you can understand the light (to the extent that you can ever understand the effects of natural light). For me it was my dining room for many years. I must have taken thousands of pictures near this north facing window -- in the chairs, standing up, sitting on the table, lying on the table, lying on the rug.

This place I understood more than any other place. When I couldn't cajole a real person to pose I would set up still life's in the morning, in the afternoon, cloudy days, rainy days, trying to get a better handle on the lights effect.

For very small children it is even more important because your window of opportunity is so small, given their attention span. I would have all my gear set up and plop these little people down into my light and then just let them move (you can't stop them). I find that you can control the space around them, but you can only control them for brief spurts of time. So, you herd them, then you shoot away for as long as they will tolerate it.

But the key is the light which passes across them. If the light is good, and you are ready, you will find that they will at some point strike a pose. Shutter speed is very important as well for this kind of shoot, but that's another subject.

I once had to go out of town and photograph a little girl in an unfamiliar place. When I got there I looked for a place where the light looked familiar to that which I had created back home. This little girl photo is the direct result of the work that I had done in my own dining room. She was sitting on a coffee table for about one and a half minutes.

I would rather have a beautiful light than a beautiful model.