If you've ever booked a family photo session and spent the drive there mentally rehearsing how to convince your three-year-old to smile nicely, you are not alone. It is one of the most common things parents say to me before we even start:
"Just so you know, she doesn't do photos" or "He's going to be a nightmare."
Here's what I always want to say: I've got this. Twenty years of working with children has a way of preparing you for exactly this moment.
Tweed Heads Family photographer
"But How Will You Get My Kids to Laugh?"
This is the question I get more than almost any other. And honestly, it's a fair one. You've probably scrolled through beautiful family photos online and wondered how in the world those children look so genuinely happy. Were they bribed? Exhausted into compliance? Photoshopped?
The answer, at least in my sessions, is none of the above.
What you're seeing in those photos is what happens when a child forgets they're being photographed at all. And getting there is a skill. One I've been building for two decades.
Before I picked up a camera professionally, I spent the better part of twenty years working in early childhood and primary education. I have sat in circles with hundreds of children. I have navigated meltdowns, shyness, over-excitement, boredom, hunger, and the very specific chaos that happens when you put siblings together and ask them to cooperate. I know how children think, what makes them tick, and more importantly, what makes them completely forget themselves and dissolve into real, genuine laughter.
That's what I bring to every family session on the Tweed Coast.
Why Forced Smiles Ruin Photos
Let me be honest about something. When a photographer says "big smiles everyone!" and holds up a camera, what they usually get is a row of people looking vaguely pained, mouths stretched into something technically smile-shaped, eyes slightly uncertain.
Children especially. They look at a camera and they perform. They do their "photo face." And the photo face is almost never the face you fell in love with.
The real laughs, the ones that crinkle their eyes and make their whole body shake, those don't come from being told to smile. They come from something unexpected. Something silly. Something that catches them completely off guard.
Forced smiles are also stressful for parents. When you're focused on getting your child to look at the camera and hold still and please for the love of everything just smile normally, you're tense. And children feel that tension immediately. It becomes a loop - you stress, they resist, the photographer waits, everyone gets more stressed.
Breaking that loop is the whole job
The Games and Tricks I Actually Use
I'm not going to give away every secret, but I will say this....I have a toolkit, and it is well worn.
Some of it is physical. There are games that work brilliantly for toddlers, movement-based activities that burn off nervous energy and turn resistance into laughter within about ninety seconds. Children who arrive clinging to their parent's leg and refusing to make eye contact are often the ones who are running toward me and demanding we do the game again by the end of the session.
Some of it is language. I know how to talk to a five-year-old differently from how I talk to a ten-year-old and differently again from a teenager who would rather be literally anywhere else. Children can smell condescension from a kilometre away. When you speak to them like an actual person, they respond like one.
Some of it is timing. Knowing when to push and when to back off. Knowing when a child needs two minutes to just exist without being directed. Knowing when a sibling dynamic is about to tip from playful into a full argument and redirecting before it gets there.
And some of it is just being genuinely interested in them. Kids know when an adult is performing interest and when it's real. I am legitimately curious about the children I photograph. What they're into, what they find funny, what their relationship with their sibling is actually like when nobody's watching. That curiosity is contagious.
What This Means for Your Tweed Coast Family Session
When you book a family session with Wonderland Photography, you're not just getting someone who knows how to use a camera in good light (though yes, the Tweed Coast golden hour light is extraordinary and I will absolutely use it to its full potential).
You're getting someone who deeply knows children. Who has spent twenty years in rooms with them, learning what makes them feel safe and what makes them light up. Who will walk into your session and within fifteen minutes have your most camera-shy child forgetting the camera is there.
The result is photos that look like your family. Not a performative version of your family. The real deal. The laughing, chaotic, messy, wonderful real version.
