Moms at a photo shoot

[Michele Rushworth]

Unless the child is very young and is insecure without "Mommy" in sight, I ask relatives and friends of the subject to wait in another area.

[Leslie Ficcaglia]

I developed my photo session techniques in a vacuum so I may be breaking all the rules, but this is what works for me. When I am shooting a subject, anyone who wants to be present is welcome. I have found that I often get a more relaxed and genuine look if the subject has a loved one there to elicit spontaneous smiles and gestures. Especially with children, I can sometimes get a much better expression when grandmom or mom is holding them. And I can use that face with the body from another photo to achieve the look we're after. The painting on my children's page of two little children on a beach, sitting on a towel with a pail of water, was created that way. I used the pose from the beach, the boy's face from a photo taken in the grandmother's yard, and the girl's face from a photo taken while grandmom was holding her. And I did another portrait awhile ago for which the only way I could get the kind of cheerful, relaxed expression we were after was to have the grandmother tickle the child.

I also make sure to have props for children; in the first case I actually brought along a small rocking horse so that I had a way to keep the little girl relatively quiet and in one place for the camera, and shot the boy's face while he was on his scooter. A high chair for a young child works well if you can pull it off; children are usually accustomed to being immobile in that setting and don't become as restless.

Even when working with adults, I enjoy having spouses or significant others present. They are often excellent at suggesting typical poses or gestures and help make the experience more comfortable for the subject. I can also get less self-conscious facial expressions when they're interacting with a loved one or friend.

And by contrast, in my previous incarnation as a psychologist I would never allow parents or relatives to be present during evaluation procedures - unless it were a very young child who needed restraint or reassurance, and then I set up quite strict parameters.

The two situations seem to call for very different treatments, to me.

[Michele Rushworth]

....during evaluation procedures....

Can you tell us what you mean by this?

[Leslie Ficcaglia]

" '...during evaluation procedures.... '

Can you tell us what you mean by this?"

I mean psychological evaluations: either general appraisals of emotional status or formal intelligence and personality assessments. In that setting, in order to obtain meaningful results that can be compared with normative data, conditions need to be carefully controlled. That's hard to do with parents there, suggesting responses or indicating by their demeanor that they disapprove of what the child is revealing.

[Joan Breckwoldt]

Thank you Leslie and Michele for your replies. How wonderful to have two such different ways of doing the same thing. That seems to be the good and the bad thing about portraiture, there aren't many rules! Sometimes that's a good thing, but when I come to a technical problem in the actualy painting, I sometimes wish there was a handbook telling me how to approach a particular problem.

I guess I'll just have to wing it as I go along until I figure out what works best for me. I can always ask the mom to sit in the other room so I (or the model) can concentrate, or have a more serious pose, etc.

Thanks for all the input!

Joan