Traverse City Family Photographer | The Pre-Session Warm Up

I just wanted to take a minute to talk about the importance of the pre-session warm up. What is this, you might ask? This is the time of interaction and introduction to your children that occurs before we begin the session. Usually for the first 15 minutes of your session we are setting equipment and during this time we like make it a point to get to know each other. Especially with young children, it’s going to be a little bit scary interacting with someone they’ve never met before. We want to ensure we can really show off your child’s personality, so we want him or her to be comfortable with us and with the environment. Here are a couple "test shots" we took to get the jitters out with these kiddos.

If we were to just throw them into the middle of the session and there’s this stranger with a camera jumping around trying to get them to look and smile, your child is going to tense up and there may even be confusion. We really just want everything to run smoothly.

Some children warm up right away, while others need the entire warm up time to start to feel comfortable and come out of their shells. And that’s OK.

After I introduce myself, I will try to get to know your child. I’ll ask them questions about what they likes, what they don’t like, sing songs, maybe play a game, etc. Just to break the ice a little, so by the time the session starts, your child is happy and more familiar with me.

Once we’ve done a session and your child realizes that I’m not scary and we have fun together, the next session shouldn’t need much warm up time at all, if any. But for the very first session together, it is a must.

Click on any photo in this blog post to be directed to the Pykosz Family Photo Gallery. If you'd like to schedule your own family photo session, head to our catalog and book online at www.TraverseCityPhoto.com/product-catalog