It's All About Trust

I've had many people ask me how I get the images I get. How do I get children to pose like that? How do I capture personalities? How long does it take?

The key word is "trust".

Not what you were thinking? Me neither at first. I had to think about it and ask myself how am I able to bring out the best in people? Then I realized what it was - they trust me. They trust me to take fun & flattering pictures of them. They trust me to not be too demanding or unreasonable in my requests of them. They trust me (especially in a wedding) to be easy-going. And because they trust me, they'll do a lot of things for me and the camera that they might not otherwise do.

For example, I managed to get Bri to take a dip in a shallow pond full of small fish & underwater weeds & mud. How? She liked sitting in muck while fish swam around her? Uhm, no. She trusted that the pictures were going to be fabulous & that I wouldn't make her stay in the water any longer than she was willing to. Sure enough . . . so the time I asked her to walk barefoot onto a log over a lake, she didn't hesitate.

Trust.

My kids trust me. Photographically speaking they trust me tremendously. They don't care if the pictures are fabulous (good for me - I use them as my photographic guinea pigs all the time!), but they do care that when they're tired of having the lens in their faces, I stop. I'm respectful of their tolerance. So how am I being rewarded for this respect? With trust. Trust enough to do a 10 minute, spur-of-the-moment photo shoot with Patrick while I was making dinner. The light was right and he wanted to pose. BAM! 33 images, edited down to 24 keepers.

BTW, here are the images of Bri in the muck.

And here is my favorite from the log.