A Guide to Showing Up at Your Session Without Performing for It

Nobody knows what to do with their hands.

I want to say that right at the top, because it is the thing I watch every single family think about the moment they realize I've arrived and the session is actually starting. The hands go stiff. The posture straightens. The smile appears... not the real one, the prepared one. And somewhere underneath all of that, you're trying to figure out what I want from you.

I don't want a performance. You'll actually see the difference in the photos, so I rarely include the performed/rehearsed images in the  gallery.

What I'm looking for lives in the moment right after you stop trying. This whole blog is about how to get there faster.

It doesn't mean I point a camera at you and wander around hoping something interesting happens.

It means I'm going to give you something to do, a prompt, and then I'm going to start clicking away while you work your way through that prompt.  But the real magic happens when I wait a bit, after the "figuring it out stage" passes, when you start to take ownership of the prompt and make it yours.  

The first few seconds of any prompt are usually the performance. The eye contact that's a little too deliberate. The laugh that's a little too ready. The way you pull each other in because you know that's what you're supposed to do for a photo.

I do take photos through all of that, but they are mostly filler for the good stuff that happens next.

What comes after the performance: the actual laugh, the real look, the small unrehearsed thing your kid does when they forget anyone is watching - that's where I'm working my hardest to find the pieces of YOUR puzzle... not the one I give you.

My methodology exists entirely in that gap between the prompt and the moment when you forget I gave you one.

If I tell you to hold hands and walk away from me, you'll do it how you're supposed to first.  And then we may do it again and it'll look a bit different because now you're walking in your gate, and your partner may glance your way, and your kid may try to run off. 

Your "hold hands and walk away" looks different than the family I just photographed - and thank goodness it does.  

That is what I am waiting for. 

You cannot fake your way into that gap between the prompt and the realness. You can only fall into it. And my job is to make it easy for you to fall.

When you look at the camera, you are performing. You know it. I know it. And the image will know it too - there's a particular quality to a face that's addressing a lens, and it is not the quality I'm after.

Well, as an artist I get to make a lot of caveats.  Unless you are looking directly into my camera's soul.  You're looking past it, you're giving me the intense stare that you would give your best friend from across a room... I'm good with my camera getting that type of attention.  

But if you're going to do that - I want you to give me goosebumps with how you do it: look into my camera like it knows you in the most intimate ways... and the final image will feel like it too.

But otherwise...

I'm going to ask you, repeatedly, to look at each other (scratch that, engage with one another) instead of me.

This feels counterintuitive. Every school picture, every wedding photo, every holiday card image you've ever been in has been about making eye contact with the camera. You have been trained, thoroughly, over decades, to look at the lens when a camera is present.

We're unlearning that today.

When I say walk toward that tree, I don't need you to think about where I am. When I say tell each other something you haven't said today, I need you to actually look at each other while you do it. When your kid takes off running, don't look back at me... chase them.

Okay, actually, yeah you can look back, take peeks, steal glances, flirt a bit with the camera.  But its not the focus of our intent.

The camera will find you. That's my part. Your part is to stay inside the moment with your people.

This is the question I get asked more than almost any other, and I love it because it is so specific and so honest. Your hands are a problem because when you're nervous, they become suddenly very visible and very confusing.

Here is what I'm going to tell you on the day: put them somewhere that makes contact with someone else.

Hand on your partner's back. Fingers tucked into your kid's collar. Your daughter's hand in yours while you're walking. Wrapped in your partners hair or the back of their neck.  Your arm around whoever is standing next to you, like you've done it a thousand times, because you have.

The hands that look bad in photos are the hands that are trying to look good in photos. The hands that hang at your side because you've been told not to shove them in your pockets. The hands that are posed on a hip because someone once said that looked natural.

Touch your people. That's it. That is the whole answer to the hands question.

If nothing else is happening and you genuinely don't know where to put them, reach for your kid. Brush the hair out of their face. Fix their collar. Give them a squeeze you weren't planning to give them. Those three seconds of ordinary, unrehearsed contact are where I live.

 Caveat - yeah sticking your hands in your pockets don't always look great, but if that is what you always do, I'll just direct you to do it a little less casually if necessary.

When I give you something to do, I'm not scripting a shot. I'm starting a reaction. Here's how to treat it:

Take it literally. If I say walk together, walk. If I say whisper something in her ear, actually whisper something.

Don't look at me to see if you're doing it right. You're already doing it right if you're doing it the way you would naturally do it.

Don't stop when it feels awkward. The awkward moment is actually the most useful one. Something real almost always lives right on the other side of it. If you laugh because it felt weird, that laugh is exactly what I was waiting for.

Let the kids take over. I'll often prompt the adults and then something happens with the kids entirely on its own: someone runs, someone interrupts, someone makes a face that changes the whole energy. When that happens, follow them. I will follow you. The best images I have from any session are the ones where everyone forgot what we were originally doing.

Don't narrate it. You don't need to say "okay, we're doing this now" or "is this right?" Just do the thing. The moment you explain it, it's over.

I'm giving you absolute permission to allow the prompt to be molded however it feels like it should be to you.

Every session has a performance phase. It usually lasts about ten to fifteen minutes, sometimes less with kids in the mix because they exhaust it faster. You arrive, you're aware that you're being photographed, and something in you tries to show me your best version.

I expect it. I don't fight it.

I just wait it out.

Once the performance runs out of steam, once you stop thinking about the camera, once the kids demand enough of your actual attention that you don't have any left over for me, once your body just gets tired of being held in a slightly better-than-usual version of itself... that's when we really start.

The images from the first fifteen minutes of a session are almost never the ones that end up on your walls. The ones that do? Usually come from the moment you stopped caring what I was doing.

I know you've got the mental list running. Whether the kids are okay. Whether the light looks good. Whether you should have worn the other shirt. Whether your partner is annoyed about something. Whether you look like yourself or like someone who is trying very hard to look like yourself.

I can't turn that off for you. But I can give you something to pay attention to that isn't me.

Look at your kids. Actually look at them. The specific way your son is holding your hand right now. The face your daughter makes when she's about to laugh. The thing your partner does with their eyes when they're really listening to someone.

Stay in that. Keep coming back to that when you drift. The physical reality of your people, right in front of you, on this specific ordinary Tuesday, that is the whole session.

Everything I'm doing is just trying to catch it.

There's a moment in almost every session where I watch it happen. Someone stops managing the experience and just... exists in it. The shoulders come down. The jaw unclenches. The smile stops being ready and starts being real.

Sometimes it's the kids pulling everyone into something chaotic. Sometimes it's a quiet moment on the couch where someone forgets to perform. Sometimes it's fifteen minutes in, sometimes it's forty-five.

I'll know it when it happens. You probably will too.

And that's when I stop waiting and start working. Because everything I've been patiently collecting before that moment was just the warm-up.

Come as you are. Let it be messy. Let the kids lead. Touch your people and stop looking at me.

Then, lets find the good stuff.