Getting kids to smile and pose for a photograph

We have been trying to teach Akshara to smile for photographs for quite some time now. She smiles normally during regular conversations, but her smile takes a totally different flavour when done for photographs! Neither i or Vidhya smile like this, so she definitely didn’t pick this up from us.

We do hit the purple patch sometimes, but that depends on the combination of the luck of the photographer and the camera! Also, it does help if Laya is next to her to get her in the good mood for photographs.

So, we started trying out different things when the smile just doesn’t get going. Thanks to one of Vidhya’s cousins, Akshara was introduced to the “surprise” look. Though this is not the equivalent of a smile, this definitely looks better on a photograph.

But, this too doesn’t guarantee results, as the “surprise” sometimes becomes extremely contorted.

We were at the grahapravesham function of my b-i-l in Chennai and Vidhya wanted a lot of the girls-only snaps with many of her cousins and their kids at the function. This was easier said than done with every kid wanting to do its own thing (actually everyone other than Laya and Akshara were a bit older and co-operated with the requests).

All of us were munching on some snacks and we gave some to Laya and Akshara too. Then, we noticed that they were so busy on the snacks that they readily agreed to pose for all the photo requests and that too with a smile! Ok, it doesn’t matter if their hand is always in or close to the mouth in all photographs.

So, there it was, the perfect trick to getting to do all the things you want for a photograph. But, there are some finer aspects to take care, as we learnt along the way.

Always ensure that the size or the quantity of the snack you give (in case there is more than one kid) is same or at least looks the same from the viewpoint of the kids. There will definitely be an investigation as to whether the other one is bigger and if it happens to be so, you can just forget your nice-smile photographs and look forward to some war footage.

If you have seen the eclairs ad running currently on the channels, the drummer keeps feeding the bald guys to ensure that they have their mouths full. Similarly, always ensure that there is an ample supply of snack for all the kids. On thing you can do is to strategically get an adult to keep the supply chain on , away from the view of the camera , but caught by the other camera in the second photo below.