In the life of a photographer that works with young kids there are going to be sessions that don’t go well. Skipped naps, illness, traveling, a bad night’s sleep or just stranger anxiety are just a few of the many things that can cause a session to head south. Usually we can “break” a kid and eventually they smile enough that we know we got the shots we needed. Then there are the times when it’s just not going to happen. There have been a few newborns where after 4+ hours and little to no shots taken we have to call it quits and schedule a second day. Earlier this fall I had a little guy who was just NOT going to like me and it turned out he had strep they found out the next day. So usually we reschedule and everything goes so much better on day two!
But oh Roman. He was just NOT having it for this session. Which came as a HUGE surprise to all of us because he gave us five minutes at the very beginning of just pure joy! Smiles and giggles and doing what we needed! This was one of the very first shots we took…
I mean you can’t find a cuter kid!
We knew we had what we needed and mom had tons of other cute outfits so she changed him for the next shot. That’s when all hell broke loose! He became a totally different baby! We tried EVERYTHING we could think of and so did mom and Grandma!
We rarely send the parents completely away because we never want to scare a little one but we even tried that… mom and Grandma went and hid while we tried to get him to calm down…
1. It was PEAK fall color time (don’t you guys miss that already? The trees are mostly bare now and it makes me so sad!)
2. I was totally wearing my work-out clothes… don’t judge!
3. This was our last Baby Plan baby together so now Kim will just be doing newborns… kind of made me sad!
I got so desperate I started shooting the wildlife!
After a couple of hours we called it quits. We rescheduled for a couple of weeks later and hoped he would be in a better mood and recognize us.
BUT Roman had other plans! He took one look at us and just knew what was coming! If he was out of mom’s arms for a second he just screamed! And she wasn’t ready for photos… they really just wanted cute shots of Roman. We ended up getting a few great shots but the out-takes are what totally crack me up!
Kim is hating me for posting this but it just makes me laugh SO hard! He wasn’t just crying he was PISSED OFF! His face cracks me up!
Lori is the sweetest and really Roman is a great kid, he just wanted nothing to do with having his photo taken this fall! We tried twice and well, it’s not as many photos as we should have for her but we tried SO hard to make that kid like us!
I easily could have posted a few of the good ones and never mentioned our massive failure but I feel like it’s important to be honest about stuff like this happening! There are lots of newer photographers that read this and I want to put out there that you can be as experienced as we are and still have sessions that don’t go the way you hoped. And that’s ok. You can do everything possible and sometimes it’s just not going to happen! I think it’s also important for our clients to see this. Kids have melt downs, bad days, etc. and we work hard to roll with the punches and make lemonade out of lemons… but we also have to sometimes call it quits. I have a feeling we’ll see Roman again and he’ll just LOVE us! HA! That kid is a photographers dream because mom has amazing taste and he’s so stinkin adorable… next time Lori!